Catholic Monitor

Neocon Obama & Obama Mama linked to CIA?

2009-12-12T08:03:00.000-08:00

The first article is from a sincere leftist and the next two are from generally reliable sources. Who knows?

Fred

http://www.nowpublic.com/barack_obama_neocon_disguise_0

Barack Obama is a Neocon in Disguise

uploaded by chet July 31, 2007

The 2004 Democratic National Convention
was most remembered for a young, energetic senator the likes of the
American people had not seen since Bobby Kennedy. With his DNC
presentation, Barack Obama was launched into the national spotlight,
lauded for his populist-themed speech that became universally
described as “articulate”. More importantly, Obama was bringing
a new style of rhetoric to the political table that ultimately set
the stage for the 2006 elections and his current presidential
campaign. Anyone unsure of his political record was still aware of
his staunch criticism of the Iraq War. From this national
appearance he filled a political void by connecting with the growing
anti-Iraq-war movement. But in more recent speeches, Obama has
clarified his pro-interventionist intentions.

Although Barack Obama is described as
a liberal Democrat, his message on foreign policy has been subject to
question. Obama criticizes the handling of the Iraq war, but
continues to promote an interventionist agenda. He has aligned
himself with American Israeli Political Action committee by
prioritizing defense of Israel in the middle east. A polarized
political affiliation with Israel will needlessly drag the US into
further wars in the mideast. In a recent speech to AIPAC regarding
Iran's nuclear program, Obama clearly states “we should take no
option, including military action, off the table”. Israeli
military conflict with Iran would bring the US into a full scale war.
As of last week, there are now five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers
with escort flotillas positioned off the coast of Iran. Elements of
government are desperately seeking war with Iran. In his speeches
given to pro-Israel groups, Obama clarifies that he seeks more
intervention when dealing with Iran, which he considers “a threat
to all of us”. Ironically, the US has already supplied its middle
eastern allies with nuclear systems. The US is known to be the
world's greatest violator of non-proliferation treaties. Obama's
hypocrisy is most evident by his denouncement of the politics of oil.
Obama's alliance would back a preemptive strike against Iran that
would disrupt oil fields that provide energy to Asia and Europe,
further increasing world oil prices. It would create incentive for
an attack on Iran. His foreign policy cannot be considered anti-war
by any stretch of the definition. Surprising, these politics are
closest aligned with the “neoconservative” ideology. Obama
preaches an anti-war message to his constituency, but promises an
unfaltering military alliance with Israel.

Obama goes even further in his support
for further US military activities. He outlines an ambitious foreign
policy plan a recent essay written for Foreign Affairs magazine
(July/Aug 07). Iran and Syria are specified as longstanding threats
that must be neutralized by means of American power.

Barack Obama can captivate anyone with
his refreshing new style of political rhetoric. He has gathered
supporters by acknowledging the failures in Iraq. Unfortunately, he
supports polarizing foreign alliances. Like many politicians, there
is duplicity to his message. It is not a message of anti-war.
Obama's foreign policy goals leave us constantly on the brink of a
full scale war. It puts our defense forces at the disposal of our
“allies”. Barack Obama's deceptive message on foreign policy
make him a neocon in sheep's clothing.

The 2004 Democratic National Convention
was most remembered for a young, energetic senator the likes of the
American people had not seen since Bobby Kennedy. With his DNC
presentation, Barack Obama was launched into the national spotlight,
lauded for his populist-themed speech that became universally
described as “articulate”. More importantly, Obama was bringing
a new style of rhetoric to the political table that ultimately set
the stage for the 2006 elections and his current presidential
campaign. Anyone unsure of his political record was still aware of
his staunch criticism of the Iraq War. From this national
appearance he filled a political void by connecting with the growing
anti-Iraq-war movement. But in more recent speeches, Obama has
clarified his pro-interventionist intentions.

Although Barack Obama is described as
a liberal Democrat, his message on foreign policy has been subject to
question. Obama criticizes the handling of the Iraq war, but
continues to promote an interventionist agenda. He has aligned
himself with American Israeli Political Action committee by
prioritizing defense of Israel in the middle east. A polarized
political affiliation with Israel will needlessly drag the US into
further wars in the mideast. In a recent speech to AIPAC regarding
Iran's nuclear program, Obama clearly states “we should take no
option, including military action, off the table”. Israeli
military conflict with Iran would bring the US into a full scale war.
As of last week, there are now five Nimitz-class aircraft carriers
with escort flotillas positioned off the coast of Iran. Elements of
government are desperately seeking war with Iran. In his speeches
given to pro-Israel groups, Obama clarifies that he seeks more
intervention when dealing with Iran, which he considers “a threat
to all of us”. Ironically, the US has already supplied its middle
eastern allies with nuclear systems. The US is known to be the
world's greatest violator of non-proliferation treaties. Obama's
hypocrisy is most evident by his denouncement of the politics of oil.
Obama's alliance would back a preemptive strike against Iran that
would disrupt oil fields that provide energy to Asia and Europe,
further increasing world oil prices. It would create incentive for
an attack on Iran. His foreign policy cannot be considered anti-war
by any stretch of the definition. Surprising, these politics are
closest aligned with the “neoconservative” ideology. Obama
preaches an anti-war message to his constituency, but promises an
unfaltering military alliance with Israel.

Obama goes even further in his support
for further US military activities. He outlines an ambitious foreign
policy plan a recent essay written for Foreign Affairs magazine
(July/Aug 07). Iran and Syria are specified as longstanding threats
that must be neutralized by means of American power.

Barack Obama can captivate anyone with
his refreshing new style of political rhetoric. He has gathered
supporters by acknowledging the failures in Iraq. Unfortunately, he
supports polarizing foreign alliances. Like many politicians, there
is duplicity to his message. It is not a message of anti-war.
Obama's foreign policy goals leave us constantly on the brink of a
full scale war. It puts our defense forces at the disposal of our
“allies”. Barack Obama's deceptive message on foreign policy
make him a neocon in sheep's clothing.

http://www.examiner.com/x-14143-Orange-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m8d24-Researchers-finding-CIA-links-to-Obama-and-Obamas-mamaspooky#comments

Obama & Obama Mama linked to CIA
County Conservative Examiner

Obama-CIA Secret AgentThe eye-opener here concerns Obama's first job out of college. In his autobiography, "Dreams from My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as

A consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer"

In fact he was recruited by Business International Corporation that was continuously being accused of as a CIA front company. Wikipedia, an independent source, supports this,

The company has been identified as cover organization for the Central Intelligence Agency, e.g. see Lobster Magazine, and issue 14 in 1987. According to a lengthy article in the New York Times in 1977, the co-founder of the company told the newspaper that "Eldridge Haynes [the other founder] had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960"

Oddly Obama's book doesn't mention the name of his employer. However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation. In his book, he doesn't mention his employer's name nor does he say when he worked there, or why he left.
Researcher and blogger Joseph Cannon points out,

Obama's bios are as important for what they leave out as for what they reveal. I first became suspicious of his now-infamous trip to Pakistan (which he took in the summer between Occidental and Columbia) because he refused to mention this adventure in his books.”

Cannon further ads,

Think of it: We are talking about a man who compiled not one but two autobiographical works before the age of 46. We are talking about an ambitious politician intent on establishing his foreign policy cred. Yet he refused to mention a dangerous trip to Pakistan which he made at a time when travel to that country was discouraged by the State Department. That country was then the focus of the CIA's largest covert operation, the supplying of the Afghan mujahedeen. While there, this callow college kid met with one of the most powerful men in Pakistan -- a meeting arranged by an unnamed personage with the American Embassy. (Spook-watchers know what that means.)”

If the Pakistan trip was a pleasure jaunt, why did Obama keep it a secret? He wrote in his autobiography that he was broke and on food stamps which leads to the question how did he pay for this expensive trip.
Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, visited at least 13 countries, and had worked for companies that required travel to Pakistan. Her employers appear to have included the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women's World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Note that USAID and the Ford Foundation have (allegedly) been used as covers for CIA agents. Like mother, like son. Ann worked for at least two organizations notorious for providing CIA cover. Barack went straight from college to an organization known to provide CIA cover and supposedly, his mother was a leftist. Yet she married Lolo Sotero who just so happens to be a key intermediary between the American’s and Indonesian strongman Suharto, who coincidently was, installed by the CIA in an extremely bloody coup. (Obama admits this in his book.).

Conclusive evidence has yet to be discovered but one can’t help but ask: When we try to sort out who's who in the clandestine world, you never get what constitutes hard evidence? The fact remains that if you are Koolaid drinker, then no amount of proof will ever suffice!

Original Message -----
From: Richard
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 3:37 PM
Subject: What next?
NOBODY REMEMBERS OBAMA AT COLUMBIA

Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 Columbia University students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but none remembered him.

Wayne Allyn Root was, like Obama, a political science major at Columbia who also graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me.

I don't have a classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia . Ever! Nobody recalls him. I'm not exaggerating, I'm not kidding."
Root adds that he was also, like Obama, "Class of '83 political science, pre-law" and says, "You don't get more exact or closer than that. Never met him in my life, don't know anyone who ever met him.

At the class reunion, our 20th reunion five years ago, who was asked to be the speaker of the class? Me.

No one ever heard of Barack! And five years ago, nobody even knew who he was. The guy who writes the class notes, who's kind of the, as we say in New York, the macha who knows everybody, has yet to find a person, a human who ever met him. Is that not strange?

It's very strange." Obama's photograph does not appear in the school's yearbook and Obama consistently declines requests to talk about his years at Columbia, provide school records, or provide the name of any former classmates or friends while at Columbia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Allyn_Root#column-one
NOTE: Root graduated as Valedictorian from his high school, Thornton-Donovan School , then graduated from Columbia University in 1983 as a Political Science major (in the same class as President Barack Obama WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN IN)

Rejection of the Fatherhood of God

2009-12-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

"Rejection of the Fatherhood of God by the vast majority of mankind inevitably has set in motion a chain reaction of consequences affecting fatherhood under every aspect that we have considered here. The notion of fatherhood in many families, for example, has been reduced to a biological fact. And the role of the father as the head of the family has completely gone out of style...the disintegration of the family inexorably and inevitably is leading to the disintegration of society itself....But the spirit of anti-fatherhood has entered even the Catholic Church. Recognition of the fatherhood of the Vicar of Christ...has eroded to an alarming degree...the role of priestly fatherhood is now coveted by women, seeking to escape the noble destiny which God has prepared for their sex, but which nevertheless they are taught to regard as drudgery. (pp.40-41)"

http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/search?q=Joseph+A.+Cirrincione

The Dance of the Sun

October 13 marks the anniversary of the final apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, when the sun swirled in the sky, a phenomenon witnessed by thousands of people. The three children-- Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta-- saw Our Lady appear as the joyful Virgin Mother, the Sorrowful Mother, and finally as Our Glorious Lady of Mount Carmel. They also saw St. Joseph in the sky, holding the Child Jesus. In his book entitled St. Joseph, Fatima, and Fatherhood, Monsignor Joseph A. Cirrincione offers some thought-provoking reflections.

The role of the priest in relation to Christ is strikingly analogous to the role of St. Joseph in relation to God the Father. Just as the Eternal Father willed to share His Fatherhood with St. Joseph...so Jesus willed to share His Fatherhood with the priest.... (p.28)
Likewise, "the sun stands out in a special way as a symbol and figure of God, and also of His Church...." Monsignor goes on to say that at Fatima "the 'miracle of the sun' represents not so much a threat of evils to come as it does a foreshadowing of the dethronement of God the Father, and an intimation of the appalling consequences inevitably to follow." One month after the "dance" of the sun in Fatima, the Communists took control of Russia.

The combination of atheism and secularism-- which practically speaking amounts to the universal and official rejection of the Fatherhood of God by mankind across the entire face of the earth....And I believe it was foreshadowed by the 'miracle of the sun' at Fatima in 1917.

[....]

Rejection of the Fatherhood of God by the vast majority of mankind inevitably has set in motion a chain reaction of consequences affecting fatherhood under every aspect that we have considered here. The notion of fatherhood in many families, for example, has been reduced to a biological fact. And the role of the father as the head of the family has completely gone out of style...the disintegration of the family inexorably and inevitably is leading to the disintegration of society itself....But the spirit of anti-fatherhood has entered even the Catholic Church. Recognition of the fatherhood of the Vicar of Christ...has eroded to an alarming degree...the role of priestly fatherhood is now coveted by women, seeking to escape the noble destiny which God has prepared for their sex, but which nevertheless they are taught to regard as drudgery. (pp.40-41)

Our Lady of Fatima's remedy for societal and moral ills is the prayer of the rosary, consecration to her Immaculate Heart (symbolized by wearing the brown scapular), and the loving performance of our daily duties. It is becoming increasingly more difficult for Christians to perform the most basic duties of their individual states of life. Yet it is the fulfillment of our ordinary duties upon which our salvation depends. Let us have an ever increasing confidence in the prayers and protection of the Mother of Mercy.

.

Dont Read this if you Scare Easily on the Economic Crisis

2009-11-29T00:08:00.000-08:00

This is the best summary of the present economic crisis. To get more details read Dick Morris' Fleeced and Ellen Brown's Web of Debt. This article and the two books show how to get out of mess, also.

Fred

A Small Bridge...

The global economic problem is the problem of too much debt: personal, corporate, municipal, state and national. And there is no "solution," except (perhaps) for a "system re-set." The case for a "Jubilee" year of debt forgiveness...

By Dr. Robert Moynihan, reporting from Rome

Yes, the problem is the debt.

The debt is not large, it is colossal. And there are only two possibilities for paying off the debt:

(1) many, many years of belt-tightening and lower consumption (read, global depression); and

(2) an abrupt repudiation of the debt, and the total collapse of world trade, with an effect perhaps not completely unlike the collapse of trade that came with the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century, followed by the centuries we commonly call "the Dark Ages" (though that is a too simplistic, and in many ways false, description of the second half of the first millennium).

In either case, we face social and economic choices which will strain our political systems to the breaking point.

Instead of a triumphant, humanist dream of global progress with progressively less drudgery and longer life-spans of ever-healthier people (which was always only a tarnished dream, for many of the world's people especially in the "Third World," and for many even of the wealthy in the so-called "First World"), we will have widespread poverty, and a likely global struggle for scarce resources, and the cruelty and propaganda that such resource wars will require.

And, if we look at the charts, they are telling us that this future is now, it is here — it is coming upon us with the speed of a freight train hurtling through the tunnel of history into the second-half of the year 2009, and the year 2010, and the second decade of the 21st century.

The chart at the left, for example, shows the dramatic, unprecedented fall in S&P 500 earnings over recent months. You can see for yourself that this has never happened before... (Perhaps the chart could reverse; I'm not saying it can't; I am saying it shows something unprecedented in its magnitude, at least since the 1920s.)

What do the charts tell us? They tell us that the modern mis-allocation of capital — reckless, foolish malinvestment — has during the past three decades of "affluence" literally thrown away the wealth of the West, laboriously created over many generations, leaving us with unprecedented debts, which cannot be paid, and which make a "New Deal" impossible, as there is no money, no real wealth, available to finance the renewal.

We are bankrupt, and there is nothing left for it but to declare the bankruptcy and reorganize the entire system from scratch. And that declaration is precisely what the world's leading political and financial leaders are striving at all costs to avoid making.

How did we get here?

The story is a complicated one, but three major turning points stand out.

First, the return of usury.

Yes, usury became legal in the US during the past 30 years following the overturning of US laws against very high interest rates (that is, usury, something the Church, as well as the Jewish and Islamic traditions, has always condemned).

When did this happen? Well, 1978 was a turning point. In that year, a US Supreme Court ruling opened the way to higher interest rates on credit cards throughout the United States.

Here is a brief summary: "A 1978 (US) Supreme Court decision ("Marquette") fundamentally altered the market for credit card loans in a way that significantly expanded the availability of credit and increased the average risk profile of borrowers. Marquette ushered in deregulation of usury ceilings on consumer interest rates by allowing lenders in a state with liberal usury ceilings to export those rates to consumers residing in states with more restrictive usury ceilings. The result was a substantial expansion in credit card availability, a reduction in average credit quality, and a secular increase in personal bankruptcies." (Here is a link to the complete report on this ruling, with some quite interesting graphs and analysis: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/bank/bt_9805.html)

Second, easy money.

Yes, the financial leadership of the US decided to flood the country with money at low interest rates.

This was caused by the decision of the US Federal Reserve to keep the "Fed funds" rate, which it charges member banks, very low, and eventually, in the years following 2001, at a record low of 1 percent per year. That low rate enabled banks to borrow cheaply and then lend out huge sums of money, especially for home purchases. This fueled a speculative fever, and led to the unprecedented rise in housing prices from the late 1990s to 2006, which have since 2007 begun to collapse in price.

Third, de-regulation.

Especially, the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999.

On November 12 of that year, the US Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been passed under the Roosevelt administration in 1933 to keep banks from speculating with the savings that American citizens were entrusting to them.

The law's repeal, under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was drafted and passed by a Republican Congress, and signed by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. So, it was a bi-partisan decision.

It allowed commercial banks to merge with investment banks. (For instance, Citigroup merged with Traveler's Insurance, although this merger was announced in 1998, before the act was passed; at the time Citigroup CEO Sanford I. Weill said that he spoke with government officials and, "that over that time the legislation will change... we have had enough discussions to believe this will not be a problem").

Now, the banks could sell mortgages to homeowners, but also repackage the mortgages and sell them as "sound investments" to pension plans and other Wall Street firms. It was a license to speculate, and it led to ever-looser mortgage-lending standards, and eventually to the collapse we have begun to experience (it isn't finished).

Now, in his new encyclical, Pope Benedict is pointing his finger at the root cause of this financial mess: human greed, human willingness to trick and deceive for the sake of profit.

Only the Pope, among all the leaders in the world, has the counter-cultural courage to denounce what is occurring, to say it is a crime against the dignity of man, and that there is another way, a difficult way, but a way that, if taken could lead to a more just world, a more free world, a more dignified world, a more prosperous world, a cleaner world, not as filled with bright lights and tinsel, but a world with simplicity and truth, with families and feasts, with hope for the future and freedom in the present.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:1hoaH-pSKmsJ:www.insidethevatican.com/newsflash/2009/newsflash-jul-06-09.htm+robert+moynihan+points+to+root+causes+of+global+economic+crisis&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&ie=UTF-8

A Small Bridge...
The global economic problem is the problem of too much debt: personal, corporate, municipal, state and national. And there is no "solution," except (perhaps) for a "system re-set." The case for a "Jubilee" year of debt forgiveness...

By Dr. Robert Moynihan, reporting from Rome

================================

St. Augustine on how nations or kingdoms are no better than a band of pirates if they are not committed to justice:

Set aside justice, then, and what are kingdoms but great bands of brigands? For what are brigands' bands but little kingdoms?... And if those ragamuffins grow up to be able to keep forts, build habitations, possess cities, and conquer adjoining nations, then their government is no longer called brigandage, but graced with the eminent name of a kingdom [or nation], given not because they have left their practices but because they use them without danger of law. Elegant and excellent was that pirate's answer to the great Macedonian Alexander [the Great], who had captured him, when the king asked him how he dared to molest the seas so. He replied with a free spirit: “How do you dare to molest the whole earth? But because I do it only with a little ship, I am called a brigand: you doing it with a great navy are called an emperor.”

— St. Augustine, City of God, Book IV

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ." —St. Paul, Letter to the Ephesians 4:15)

================================

In a few hours, Pope Benedict XVI's long-awaited social encyclical Veritas in Caritate ("Truth in Love," a quotation from St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians) will be published, and we will see what type of counsel the Pope offers to mankind at this moment of global economic crisis.

The essential counsel he will offer is that men should act virtuously, that is, not selfishly — not like rapacious brigands, or cruel pirates, or greedy thieves, but like upright, honest men, fair and trustworthy, and even like brothers, if possible. Only if we strive toward such virtuous behavior, he will say, can we hope to build a much more just society and economic order.

Will anyone heed him?

Perhaps not. But if he is not heeded, the trends now in place seem likely to lead to ever-greater social and economic disorder, to greater unemployment and poverty, with terrible consequences for the weaker among us, especially children and the elderly.

But where are we, actually, in the global economic cricis? And how did we get here? And where are we going?

The economic and market charts don't lie. They may be impossible to interpret correctly, or even usefully — that is something else. But they don't lie; they convey true information. It may be that the information they convey is irrelevant; it may be that the information is only partial, and that there are other factors, not taken into consideration, not reflected in the charts, or not yet reflected. But the charts tell a story. And this is the story they are telling.

The concentration of capital in the corporations of the leading western democracies, reflected in the Standard and Poors chart of the collective price of the shares of the largest 500 companies on the New York stock exchange, has double-topped (chart).

The first top was in the spring of the year 2000, not long before the events of September 11, 2001, which — according to the charts — far from crashing the markets definitively, actually offered an opportunity to "save" the markets.

The second top was at the end of 2007, and has been followed by 18 months of decline, with a small rise since March of this year, following the election of President Barack Obama and the injection into the US economy of approximately $13 trillion in new liquidity (I do not say "money" because I do not want to get into a philosophical debate about what "money" is; let's just call it "liquidity," which is another way of saying "a reality which acts like money, and may be money, but which is so elusive that it seems wiser not to call it money, but liquidity"). An approximately equal amount has been injected into the economies of the European Union and the rest of the world.

But the result of this unprecedented, extravagant, multi-trillion-dollar financial maneuver has not been to restore fiscal sanity to the economies of the world.

On the contrary, instead of the restoration of fiscal sanity, what has happened has been much more like the equivalent of a losing gambler "doubling down" with borrowed money after he has lost all his chips, to avoid admitting that he is broke and out of the game.

In essence, after a total loss of capital in derivatives trades and other speculative malinvestments amounting to something like $80 trillion during 2007 and 2008, the world's governments have dipped into about $25 trillion of the future earnings of their citizens (taxpayers) to try to finance one last bet — one last throw of the dice.

The result has been to unbalance the global economic system even further. The result has been to drive the entire world even nearer to a global "tipping point." A tipping point in what? In debt.

In borrowed money which must somehow be either defaulted on or paid back.

The chart to the left shows only one example of this debt. It refers to the debt of US households over the past 40 years. The chart shows a curving line that is going parabolic.

Other similar charts exist, of corporate debt (think General Motors), of municipal debt (think Birmingham, Alabama), of state debt (think California, which on July 1 began issuing IOUs because it has run out of cash), of national debt (the US was the world's Number 1 creditor nation in the late 1980s, and is now the Number 1 debtor nation, and many other nations also have staggering debt loads).

The sword of Damocles hanging over the world is not a sword of steel, but a sword of notional electronic currency values, digits of debt, and if that sword finally descends, it will sever the arteries of all the productive forces of the world, and bring world production and trading of goods and services to a shuddering halt.

Yes, the problem is the debt.

The debt is not large, it is colossal. And there are only two possibilities for paying off the debt:

(1) many, many years of belt-tightening and lower consumption (read, global depression); and

(2) an abrupt repudiation of the debt, and the total collapse of world trade, with an effect perhaps not completely unlike the collapse of trade that came with the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century, followed by the centuries we commonly call "the Dark Ages" (though that is a too simplistic, and in many ways false, description of the second half of the first millennium).

In either case, we face social and economic choices which will strain our political systems to the breaking point.

Instead of a triumphant, humanist dream of global progress with progressively less drudgery and longer life-spans of ever-healthier people (which was always only a tarnished dream, for many of the world's people especially in the "Third World," and for many even of the wealthy in the so-called "First World"), we will have widespread poverty, and a likely global struggle for scarce resources, and the cruelty and propaganda that such resource wars will require.

And, if we look at the charts, they are telling us that this future is now, it is here — it is coming upon us with the speed of a freight train hurtling through the tunnel of history into the second-half of the year 2009, and the year 2010, and the second decade of the 21st century.

The chart at the left, for example, shows the dramatic, unprecedented fall in S&P 500 earnings over recent months. You can see for yourself that this has never happened before... (Perhaps the chart could reverse; I'm not saying it can't; I am saying it shows something unprecedented in its magnitude, at least since the 1920s.)

What do the charts tell us? They tell us that the modern mis-allocation of capital — reckless, foolish malinvestment — has during the past three decades of "affluence" literally thrown away the wealth of the West, laboriously created over many generations, leaving us with unprecedented debts, which cannot be paid, and which make a "New Deal" impossible, as there is no money, no real wealth, available to finance the renewal.

We are bankrupt, and there is nothing left for it but to declare the bankruptcy and reorganize the entire system from scratch. And that declaration is precisely what the world's leading political and financial leaders are striving at all costs to avoid making.

How did we get here?

The story is a complicated one, but three major turning points stand out.

First, the return of usury.

Yes, usury became legal in the US during the past 30 years following the overturning of US laws against very high interest rates (that is, usury, something the Church, as well as the Jewish and Islamic traditions, has always condemned).

When did this happen? Well, 1978 was a turning point. In that year, a US Supreme Court ruling opened the way to higher interest rates on credit cards throughout the United States.

Here is a brief summary: "A 1978 (US) Supreme Court decision ("Marquette") fundamentally altered the market for credit card loans in a way that significantly expanded the availability of credit and increased the average risk profile of borrowers. Marquette ushered in deregulation of usury ceilings on consumer interest rates by allowing lenders in a state with liberal usury ceilings to export those rates to consumers residing in states with more restrictive usury ceilings. The result was a substantial expansion in credit card availability, a reduction in average credit quality, and a secular increase in personal bankruptcies." (Here is a link to the complete report on this ruling, with some quite interesting graphs and analysis: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/bank/bt_9805.html)

Second, easy money.

Yes, the financial leadership of the US decided to flood the country with money at low interest rates.

This was caused by the decision of the US Federal Reserve to keep the "Fed funds" rate, which it charges member banks, very low, and eventually, in the years following 2001, at a record low of 1 percent per year. That low rate enabled banks to borrow cheaply and then lend out huge sums of money, especially for home purchases. This fueled a speculative fever, and led to the unprecedented rise in housing prices from the late 1990s to 2006, which have since 2007 begun to collapse in price.

Third, de-regulation.

Especially, the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999.

On November 12 of that year, the US Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been passed under the Roosevelt administration in 1933 to keep banks from speculating with the savings that American citizens were entrusting to them.

The law's repeal, under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was drafted and passed by a Republican Congress, and signed by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. So, it was a bi-partisan decision.

It allowed commercial banks to merge with investment banks. (For instance, Citigroup merged with Traveler's Insurance, although this merger was announced in 1998, before the act was passed; at the time Citigroup CEO Sanford I. Weill said that he spoke with government officials and, "that over that time the legislation will change... we have had enough discussions to believe this will not be a problem").

Now, the banks could sell mortgages to homeowners, but also repackage the mortgages and sell them as "sound investments" to pension plans and other Wall Street firms. It was a license to speculate, and it led to ever-looser mortgage-lending standards, and eventually to the collapse we have begun to experience (it isn't finished).

Now, in his new encyclical, Pope Benedict is pointing his finger at the root cause of this financial mess: human greed, human willingness to trick and deceive for the sake of profit.

Only the Pope, among all the leaders in the world, has the counter-cultural courage to denounce what is occurring, to say it is a crime against the dignity of man, and that there is another way, a difficult way, but a way that, if taken could lead to a more just world, a more free world, a more dignified world, a more prosperous world, a cleaner world, not as filled with bright lights and tinsel, but a world with simplicity and truth, with families and feasts, with hope for the future and freedom in the present.

What are governments doing? Instead of recognizing our peril, they are temporizing. As the tidal wave approaches, they are distributing umbrellas. No one is building any life rafts. No one is preparing redoubts on higher ground.

When Joseph went into Pharaoh and explained Pharaoh's dream, that the seven good years would be followed by seven bad years, and that granaries had to be built to ensure against famine, he acted prudently, and saved Egypt and much of the surrounding world, from starvation.

We must be prudent again, with our energy, with our land, with our water, with our consumption, with our pollution, or we will find that we, fat and sick to the point of vomiting, have left nothing for those who come after us except a scarred and desertified planet, incapable of supporting a large human population, incapable of supplying that surplus production which then becomes the basis of culture.

The failure to wipe out the debt overhead led to the collapse of Rome’s imperial republic, and to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire toward the end of the 19th century. From about 2,500 BC to perhaps 300 BC, Babylonian and other Near Eastern rulers kept their citizens free and preserved their landholdings by annulling personal and agrarian debts when they took the throne – a true “tax holiday."

These practices were adopted literally in the Biblical Jubilee Year if Leviticus 25. Even the same Hebrew word, deror, was used for the Babylonian andurarum proclaimed by rulers of Hammurabi’s dynasty from 2000 to 1600 BC. In the very first sermon that Jesus gave, in Nazareth (Luke 4:14-30), he unrolled the scroll of Isaiah 61 and promised that he had come “to proclaim the Year of the Lord,” the Jubilee Year. That was the literal “good news” that he preached — the forgiveness of debts.

====================

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children." —US President Dwight D. Eisenhower – Farewell Speech, 1961

Unless we act now, unless we follow the counsels of the Church, and of Pope Benedict, we will find ourselves further from Eden than ever. There is still some time before the lights go out. But it is very late.

The last decade was a time when we should have taken a prudent course, a humane course.

Now we face the abyss. But we can still seek to throw a small bridge across the deep chasm, and then widen and strengthen it, if we wish to. We should turn away from the love affair we have with pleasure and death, and choose life. Then those who come after us will look back on us, and on this age, and bless us, and not curse us. Which way will we choose?

How to Cure Serious Neuroses and be Happy

2009-11-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

The way I live is by trying to staying in God's presence. Please read how Leanne Payne explains it.

Practicing the presence of God will make you happy and can cure serious neuroses.

Fred

ed617 said...
I was reading "post modern approaches" in my psyc textbook just as I came across your blog post - how ironic.

Your argument is very well presented-I clearly understand what you're saying - but this is hardly news- I see from your bio you clearly live the life you believe in... but what would be of more use is a post describing how you are "making it" in this strange new world where there seems to be no such thing as an "objective truth" - how do you cope? What do you do to keep your values intact when reality itself is shifting beneath your feet as you walk?

Fred Martinez said...
The way I live is by trying to staying in God's presence. Please read how Leanne Payne explains it.

DAVID: What is it to practice the presence of God? What is that? How do you do that?

LEANNE: Well, you know if we've been regenerated, born again, He lives within us, but as twentieth century persons, we don't believe in what we can't see. We don't believe in God in many ways. We will give lip service to it but we don't believe in the soul either. We can't see it. But this is just to call to mind always . . . . begin to practice the presence of God . . . . in other words discipline yourself to call to mind that there is another who loves me. There is another who walks along side of me. There is a sovereign, and you learn how to pray to God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In The Healing Presence, I try to make very strong points here in the teaching, that you don't lose any one of the three dimensions of the Godhead.

DAVID: So, is this something you do all 18 waking hours, once an hour, weekly?

LEANNE: You know, when you first start, in many ways you can almost make a game of it - a wonderful game. I remember just determining to do that. When I'd be driving, I would just say, "Thank you Lord for driving with me today." You've probably done things like this. But as often as you can think of it . . . . you know when our minds are working, we are so preoccupied, it doesn't mean that we think about it every moment, but it means that we call to mind as often as we can this truth until it's just . . . . now it's really first nature. You know, I never forget it. I may be praying in the Spirit under my breath. It just comes so naturally.

DAVID: How does practicing the presence of God benefit someone's healing?

LEANNE: It's absolutely key. You know, Saint Paul did it. He said, "Fix your mind on God, fix your mind on Christ." So, even he had to discipline himself to do that. But it's much much more of a discipline for us today. The benefits are incredible. The people who are healed of their serious neuroses in our ministry - it's absolutely key. Oh, we've seen so many incredible healings . . . . I mean, just miracles . . . . we see them all the time. We almost take them for granted now. But they have to learn to practice the presence of God.

DAVID: What's the dynamic? Whereas before I would pray for healing or for deliverance from something and I'd never see victory. Now that I'm practicing the presence of God, what is the dynamic that makes it work?

LEANNE: Well, you're living from the center. You're not walking along side yourself. You soon recognize when you're living out of the Lord's health. You're living out of a sense of inferiority and that's your center - the angry child or the complaining child. You're really living from the center, and any of us can begin to do that. It makes all of the difference in the world. I tell you, the ones who are trained in this ministry and who were healed in that way, they stress it! Sometimes I think they stress it even more than I do because it means so much to them. Mario says he would have lost his mind completely. I don't know where in the world Clay would have been. Clay'd be dead or he would have killed somebody. And John Fawcett, with his brilliant mind that could never be slowed down - oh, it's wonderful to hear them teach on practicing the presence

Why do the Leftists and Gay Culture’s Rejection of Objective Truth leads to Sexually Abusing Children?

By Fred Martinez

Professor Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture through his concept of values.

Obama is a Nietzschean as Jonah Goldberg shows:

“Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is ‘being out of alignment with my values.’ Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn't being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be a sinner because his values hold that it's OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama's — unless he really is our Savior.”
[http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/08/obama-the-postm.html, http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/2008/06/06/barack-obama-the-2004-god-factor-interview-transcript/]

Bloom said that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche's influence on public education – and he could have said 30 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth. Bloom said relativism "is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society."

The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche's will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement "relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution "corrupt" and demanded a "black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted."

The liberal "Catholics" speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche's will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.

According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist "clerical homosexual network" extends to "bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders."

The "real" Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.

Meanwhile, the Nietzschean "Catholics" are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ... [and] under no circumstances can they be approved."
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Cath
olic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.

Norman Mailer, in his book "Prisoner of Sex," shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:

"So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. ... Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb ... no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator."

This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only "currency" left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.

Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.

Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.

Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.

Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with sex and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law. If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law? If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their "inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society," as Bloom said.

If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian power tactics of prison homosexuals. The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the "culture" of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.

The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don't accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn't accept the new "culture" and isn't a "team player."
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in "Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited":

"It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going 'to change the culture.'

"However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to 'convert' that the prisoner did. ... Consider, for example, what it means to impose a 'culture of teamwork' based on 'openness and mutual trust' in an individualistic society."

By using this process, the leftists with the media's marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a "mob mentality," which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the "elite" because they accept the "culture of teamwork" and have "openness" to the new definitions.

These persons wishing to be part of the "culture" or "team" are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:

"'Cognitive redefinition' involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition."

Professor Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture with it's "semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad." He said, "Words such as 'charisma,' 'lifestyle,' 'commitment,' 'identity,' and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche ... are now practically American slang."

But the most important Nietzschean slang word is "values."

"Values" are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.

One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.

Nietzsche's philosophy is summed up by Bloom as
Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one's oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.

As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or "posits" one's values on a meaningless world.

Previous to Freud's psychoanalysis, Nietzsche's writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche "had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live."

Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was " profoundly influenced by Nietzsche," according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.

The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.

Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to 'become his real self.' Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.

Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously "unscientific" model of the "symbolic language of the unconscious."

Freud's pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung's unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the "active imagination" to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.

He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.

Many Christians thought this "language of the soul" was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn't understand was that Jung's theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.

Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.

Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung "not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung's active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called 'gods' (archetypes),' and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly."

Within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought, a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist is moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner "beings" that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan "gods."
As C.S. Lewis predicted in "The Screwtape Letters," we are moving to a "scientific" paganism. C.S. Lewis' name for the "scientific" pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner "beings" was the "Forces."

In "The Screwtape Letters," his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" – then the end of the war will be in sight.

Some of the largest audiences for this "scientific" paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.

Many Christians are using Jung's active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous "because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner 'beings' accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones."

If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner "beings," uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner "being" is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.

In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner "being" (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.

Jung's autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing 'voices.' In his autobiography he said his home was "... crammed full of spirits ... they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe."

During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, "The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." Keep that word "potential" in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.

Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, "Master morality," which was different from Christian morality – or "slave morality," as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.

In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, "Zarathustra," he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.

After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with "Individual psychology," which maintains that the individual strives for what he called "superiority" but now is called "self-realization" or "self-actualization," and which came from Nietzsche's ideas of striving and self-creation.
The "human potential movement" and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of "potential" teach the superior man.

Edvard Munch said:

Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche's philosophical idea of "will to power" into the psychological concept of self-actualization. Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers's Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. ... Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche's idea of "will to power" and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.

Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of "scientific" psychology. Kearns said:

The methods are based on "the group therapy technique" first developed in America in the 1970's by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group "facilitator". The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator's approach is "value free". There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an "outsider" and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such "judgemental intolerance".

If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in "teaching religious and moral education," then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of "scientific" paganism replacing Christianity.

Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose "approach" was "value free" – that is, there was "no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question."

In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, "THE WEDGE! You can't do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. ... Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group."

Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, "bases his 'Wedge Model' on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble." Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, "Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes."

Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers, Maslow was always a revolutionary. ... In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, "In Eupsychian Management: A Journal," [Maslow said]: "I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker ... as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch."
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don't believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.

It is understandable that atheists such as Maslow , Adler and Gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since all have the basic assumption that there is no right or wrong.

But that Christians and priests hold these assumptions is a disgrace. The denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the headlines of the Boston catastrophe and other dioceses

How to Fix Our Economic Crisis

2009-11-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

http://integralcatholicsocialteachings.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

Usury and Our Economic Implosion

It's All About Usury

by John Médaille

With all the turmoil in the financial industry, you would think that there would be a national conversation of money and lending. You would think that this would be a good time to re-examine the way we create money and the way we lend it. You would think, especially, that it would be a good time to review the subject of usury, especially since the credit card market is about to collapse in the same way the mortgage market did. But no, that conversation has not taken place.

Indeed, the last great economist to address the subject was J. M. Keynes, back in the 1930's. Keynes, who was no friend of the Church, surprised himself by finding that the Church's restrictions on usury made perfect economic sense, a sense ignored by classical economists:

"Provisions against usury are amongst the most ancient economic practices of which we have record. The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds. I was brought up to believe that the attitude of the Medieval Church to the rate of interest was inherently absurd, and that the subtle discussions aimed at distinguishing the return on money-loans from the return to active investment were merely jesuitical attempts to find a practical escape from a foolish theory. But I now read these discussions as an honest intellectual effort to keep separate what the classical theory has inextricably confused together, namely, the rate of interest and the marginal efficiency of capital." [ The General Theory , 351-2]

What Keynes is saying in this somewhat technical language is that when returns to pure loans are higher than returns to actual investments, you will have a problem; if you can make more money lending to consumers at 25% than to auto makers at 10%, then the money for making things will dry up, and loans will shift to consumption and speculation. We have often noted this problem in the pages of The Distributist Review , (see The Utopia of Usurers , Usury! , Usury: Wealth Without Work , and many other articles) but we can't honestly claim that we have made a big impression on the public. However, Thomas Geoghagen in the pages of Harper's Magazine , has written an indictment of the current system entitled “Infinite Debt: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy.”

There is an interesting parallel between the lifting of the usury laws and the abolishing of the abortion laws: both were accomplished not by democratic process, but by legislative fiat; in Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp. , a 1978 Supreme Court opinion, the court found that an 1864 law prohibited the states from enforcing usury laws in their own state if it was legal in another state. For all practical purposes, this ended usury laws.

The lifting of the usury laws had dire unintended consequences, one of which was the decline of manufacturing:

"It may be hard to grasp how the dismantling of usury laws might lead to the loss of our industrial base. But it's true: it led to the loss of our best middle-class jobs. Here's a little primer on how it happened. First, thanks to the uncapping of interest rates, we shifted capital into the financial sector, with its relatively high returns. Second, as we shifted capital out of globally competitive manu-facturing, we ran bigger trade deficits. Third, as we ran bigger trade deficits, we required bigger inflows of foreign capital. We had “cheap money” flooding in from China, Saudi Arabia, and even the Fourth World. May God forgive us—we even had capital coming in from Honduras. Fourth, the banks got even more money, and they didn't even consider putting it back into manufacturing. They stuffed it into derivatives and other forms of gambling, because that's the kind of thing that got the “normal” big return; i.e., not 5 percent but 35 percent or even more."

But in addition to the economic effect, it had a profound effect on the moral character of the nation:

"The change in credit-card caps also had a bad effect on the moral character of the nation. Because interest rates were so high, the banks no longer wanted borrowers with good moral character. Look at the way lending has changed just since the time I was in law school in the early 1970s. Even then, the mantra of my teachers in contracts and commercial paper was: “The loan must be repaid!” I have a friend, a professor, who still quotes that refrain. But it's out of date. At interest rates of 25 percent, or 50 percent, or 500 percent, lenders don't really want the loan to be repaid—they want us to be irresponsible, or at least to have a certain amount of bad character."

One question, however, is why we were willing to oblige the bankers by displaying such a poor moral character. No doubt the convenience of the credit card was a factor, but there is more to it than that. One reason is that we had to. The shift in the economy from manufacturing to finance meant that workers were no longer able to bargain for wages through unions and other means. Since 1972, the median hourly wage has stagnated. We experienced a very odd pheno-menon: productivity exploded, but wages remained the same. Obviously, there was not enough purchasing power to clear the markets. Workers responded in two ways. One was to work more hours and put more family members to work, with a devastation effect on family life. The other was to borrow more. Further, the best and brightest of our students no longer went into engineering or manufacturing, but into finance. We started to lose even the knowledge of how to make things. As Thomas Geoghagen points out, not only did financial companies account for 40% of corporate profits in 2003, (up from 18% in 1988) but this may understate the problem. Many “manufacturing” firms, like GM and GE, actually made their profits from their finance divisions. GM became a company that manufactured cars in order to make loans on them.

Our current bailout plans are mainly directed at the banks, the hedge funds, the insurance companies, and other financial institutions. But this will not work. Without restoring manufacturing, farming, mining, and other basic industries, we cannot rescue the economy. But we have the order exactly reversed. The bankers get an instant bailout, no questions asked, while manufacturers, like the Big Three, have to crawl over broken glass to get what amounts to “chump change” in the context of the overall “rescue” numbers. Moreover, “contracts” with the derivative traders of AIG are regarded as sacred and unbreakable, while union contracts are broken at will.

It is the habit of the modernists to despise the past, and so it is no surprise that a restriction which existed in most cultures from the time of the Babylonians to the time of Jimmy Carter would be overturned. Yet, even modern-ism posits some empiricism, actually looking at the effects of an action. It is now long enough to look at the effects of the Supreme Courts 1978 decision. And without revisiting this decision, we cannot fix the economy.

The Health Risks of Gay Sex

2009-11-09T10:18:00.001-08:00

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html

JOHN R. DIGGS, JR., M.D.

As a physician, it is my duty to assess behaviors for their impact on health and wellbeing. When something is beneficial, such as exercise, good nutrition, or adequate sleep, it is my duty to recommend it. Likewise, when something is harmful, such as smoking, overeating, alcohol or drug abuse, and homosexual sex, it is my duty to discourage it.

Notice to Reader: "The Boards of both CERC Canada and CERC USA are aware that the topic of homosexuality is a controversial one that deeply affects the personal lives of many North Americans. Both Boards strongly reiterate the Catechism's teaching that people who self-identify as gays and lesbians must be treated with 'respect, compassion, and sensitivity' (CCC #2358). The Boards also support the Church's right to speak to aspects of this issue in accordance with her own self-understanding. Articles in this section have been chosen to cast light on how the teachings of the Church intersect with the various social, moral, and legal developments in secular society. CERC will not publish articles which, in the opinion of the editor, expose gays and lesbians to hatred or intolerance."

Note: "The Health Risks of Gay Sex" is also available in pdf format here.

Contents

Executive Summary

Levels of Promiscuity
Physical Health
Mental Health
Life Span
Monogamy

The Health Risks of Gay Sex

Introduction

I. Differences between homosexual and heterosexual relationships

A. Promiscuity
B. Physical health

1. Male Homosexual Behavior

a. Anal-genital
b. Oral-anal
c. Human Waste
d. Fisting
e. Sadism
f. Conclusion

2. Female Homosexual Behavior

C. Mental health

1. Psychiatric Illness
2. Reckless Sexual Behavior

D. Life span
E. Definition of "monogamy"

II. Cultural Implications of Promiscuity

Conclusion
Appendix A
Definitional Impediments to Research
Endnotes

Executive Summary

Sexual relationships between members of the same sex expose gays, lesbians and bisexuals to extreme risks of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), physical injuries, mental disorders and even a shortened life span. There are five major distinctions between gay and heterosexual relationships, with specific medical consequences. They are:

Levels of Promiscuity

Prior to the AIDS epidemic, a 1978 study found that 75 percent of white, gay males claimed to have had more than 100 lifetime male sex partners: 15 percent claimed 100-249 sex partners; 17 percent claimed 250-499; 15 percent claimed 500- 999; and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000 lifetime male sex partners. Levels of promiscuity subsequently declined, but some observers are concerned that promiscuity is again approaching the levels of the 1970s. The medical consequence of this promiscuity is that gays have a greatly increased likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS, syphilis and other STDs.

Similar extremes of promiscuity have not been documented among lesbians. However, an Australian study found that 93 percent of lesbians reported having had sex with men, and lesbians were 4.5 times more likely than heterosexual women to have had more than 50 lifetime male sex partners. Any degree of sexual promiscuity carries the risk of contracting STDs.

Physical Health
Common sexual practices among gay men lead to numerous STDs and physical injuries, some of which are virtually unknown in the heterosexual population. Lesbians are also at higher risk for STDs. In addition to diseases that may be transmitted during lesbian sex, a study at an Australian STD clinic found that lesbians were three to four times more likely than heterosexual women to have sex with men who were high-risk for HIV.

Mental Health
It is well established that there are high rates of psychiatric illnesses, including depression, drug abuse, and suicide attempts, among gays and lesbians. This is true even in the Netherlands, where gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) relationships are far more socially acceptable than in the U.S. Depression and drug abuse are strongly associated with risky sexual practices that lead to serious medical problems.

Life Span
The only epidemiological study to date on the life span of gay men concluded that gay and bisexual men lose up to 20 years of life expectancy.

Monogamy
Monogamy, meaning long-term sexual fidelity, is rare in GLB relationships, particularly among gay men. One study reported that 66 percent of gay couples reported sex outside the relationship within the first year, and nearly 90 percent if the relationship lasted five years.

Encouraging people to engage in risky sexual behavior undermines good health and can result in a shortened life span. Yet that is exactly what employers and governmental entities are doing when they grant GLB couples benefits or status that make GLB relationships appear more socially acceptable.

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The Health Risks of Gay Sex

Introduction

Back in the early 1980s, while working at Beth Israel Hospital, I vividly remember seeing healthy young gay men dying of a mysterious disease that researchers only later identified as a sexually transmitted disease — AIDS. Over the years, I've seen many patients with that diagnosis die.

As a physician, it is my duty to assess behaviors for their impact on health and wellbeing. When something is beneficial, such as exercise, good nutrition, or adequate sleep, it is my duty to recommend it. Likewise, when something is harmful, such as smoking, overeating, alcohol or drug abuse, it is my duty to discourage it.

When sexual activity is practiced outside of marriage, the consequences can be quite serious. Without question, sexual promiscuity frequently spreads diseases, from trivial to serious to deadly. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 65 million Americans have an incurable sexually transmitted disease (STD).1

There are differences between men and women in the consequences of same-sex activity. But most importantly, the consequences of homosexual activity are distinct from the consequences of heterosexual activity. As a physician, it is my duty to inform patients of the health risks of gay sex, and to discourage them from indulging in harmful behavior.

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I. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL AND HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

The current media portrayal of gay and lesbian relationships is that they are as healthy, stable and loving as heterosexual marriages — or even more so.2 Medical associations are promoting somewhat similar messages.3 Nevertheless, there are at least five major areas of differences between gay and heterosexual relationships, each with specific medical consequences. Those differences include:

A. Levels of promiscuity
B. Physical health
C. Mental health
D. Life span
E. Definition of "monogamy"

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A. Promiscuity

Gay author Gabriel Rotello notes the perspective of many gays that "Gay liberation was founded . . . on a 'sexual brotherhood of promiscuity,' and any abandonment of that promiscuity would amount to a 'communal betrayal of gargantuan proportions.'"4 Rotello's perception of gay promiscuity, which he criticizes, is consistent with survey results. A far-ranging study of homosexual men published in 1978 revealed that 75 percent of self-identified, white, gay men admitted to having sex with more than 100 different males in their lifetime: 15 percent claimed 100-249 sex partners; 17 percent claimed 250- 499; 15 percent claimed 500-999; and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000 lifetime male sex partners.5By 1984, after the AIDS epidemic had taken hold, homosexual men were reportedly curtailing promiscuity, but not by much. Instead of more than 6 partners per month in 1982, the average non-monogamous respondent in San Francisco reported having about 4 partners per month in 1984.6

In more recent years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reported an upswing in promiscuity, at least among young homosexual men in San Francisco. From 1994 to 1997, the percentage of homosexual men reporting multiple partners and unprotected anal sex rose from 23.6 percent to 33.3 percent, with the largest increase among men under 25.7 Despite its continuing incurability, AIDS no longer seems to deter individuals from engaging in promiscuous gay sex.8

The data relating to gay promiscuity were obtained from self-identified gay men. Some advocates argue that the average would be lower if closeted homosexuals were included in the statistics.9 That is likely true, according to data obtained in a 2000 survey in Australia that tracked whether men who had sex with men were associated with the gay community. Men who were associated with the gay community were nearly four times as likely to have had more than 50 sex partners in the six months preceding the survey as men who were not associated with the gay community.10 This may imply that it is riskier to be "out" than "closeted." Adopting a gay identity may create more pressure to be promiscuous and to be so with a cohort of other more promiscuous partners.

Excessive sexual promiscuity results in serious medical consequences — indeed, it is a recipe for transmitting disease and generating an epidemic.11 The HIV/AIDS epidemic has remained a predominantly gay issue in the U.S. primarily because of the greater degree of promiscuity among gays.12 A study based upon statistics from 1986 through 1990 estimated that 20-year-old gay men had a 50 percent chance of becoming HIV positive by age 55.13 As of June 2001, nearly 64 percent of men with AIDS were men who have had sex with men.14 Syphilis is also more common among gay men. The San Francisco Public Health Department recently reported that syphilis among the city's gay and bisexual men was at epidemic levels. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Experts believe syphilis is on the rise among gay and bisexual men because they are engaging in unprotected sex with multiple partners, many of whom they met in anonymous situations such as sex clubs, adult bookstores, meetings through the Internet and in bathhouses. The new data will show that in the 93 cases involving gay and bisexual men this year, the group reported having 1,225 sexual partners."15
A study done in Baltimore and reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that gay men contracted syphilis at three to four times the rate of heterosexuals.16 Promiscuity is the factor most responsible for the extreme rates of these and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases cited below, many of which result in a shortened life span for men who have sex with men.

Promiscuity among lesbians is less extreme, but it is still higher than among heterosexual women. Overall, women tend to have fewer sex partners than men. But there is a surprising finding about lesbian promiscuity in the literature. Australian investigators reported that lesbian women were 4.5 times more likely to have had more than 50 lifetime male partners than heterosexual women (9 percent of lesbians versus 2 percent of heterosexual women); and 93 percent of women who identified themselves as lesbian reported a history of sex with men.17 Other studies similarly show that 75-90 percent of women who have sex with women have also had sex with men.18

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B. Physical Health

Unhealthy sexual behaviors occur among both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Yet the medical and social science evidence indicate that homosexual behavior is uniformly unhealthy. Although both male and female homosexual practices lead to increases in Sexually Transmitted Diseases, the practices and diseases are sufficiently different that they merit separate discussion.

1. Male Homosexual Behavior

Men having sex with other men leads to greater health risks than men having sex with women19 not only because of promiscuity but also because of the nature of sex among men. A British researcher summarizes the danger as follows:

"Male homosexual behaviour is not simply either 'active' or 'passive,' since penile-anal, mouth-penile, and hand-anal sexual contact is usual for both partners, and mouth-anal contact is not infrequent. . . . Mouth-anal contact is the reason for the relatively high incidence of diseases caused by bowel pathogens in male homosexuals. Trauma may encourage the entry of micro-organisms and thus lead to primary syphilitic lesions occurring in the anogenital area. . . . In addition to sodomy, trauma may be caused by foreign bodies, including stimulators of various kinds, penile adornments, and prostheses."20
Although the specific activities addressed below may be practiced by heterosexuals at times, homosexual men engage in these activities to a far greater extent.21

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a. Anal-genital

Anal intercourse is the sine qua non of sex for many gay men.22 Yet human physiology makes it clear that the body was not designed to accommodate this activity. The rectum is significantly different from the vagina with regard to suitability for penetration by a penis. The vagina has natural lubricants and is supported by a network of muscles. It is composed of a mucus membrane with a multi-layer stratified squamous epithelium that allows it to endure friction without damage and to resist the immunological actions caused by semen and sperm. In comparison, the anus is a delicate mechanism of small muscles that comprise an "exit-only" passage. With repeated trauma, friction and stretching, the sphincter loses its tone and its ability to maintain a tight seal. Consequently, anal intercourse leads to leakage of fecal material that can easily become chronic.

The potential for injury is exacerbated by the fact that the intestine has only a single layer of cells separating it from highly vascular tissue, that is, blood. Therefore, any organisms that are introduced into the rectum have a much easier time establishing a foothold for infection than they would in a vagina. The single layer tissue cannot withstand the friction associated with penile penetration, resulting in traumas that expose both participants to blood, organisms in feces, and a mixing of bodily fluids.

Furthermore, ejaculate has components that are immunosuppressive. In the course of ordinary reproductive physiology, this allows the sperm to evade the immune defenses of the female. Rectal insemination of rabbits has shown that sperm impaired the immune defenses of the recipient.23 Semen may have a similar impact on humans.24

The end result is that the fragility of the anus and rectum, along with the immunosuppressive effect of ejaculate, make anal-genital intercourse a most efficient manner of transmitting HIV and other infections. The list of diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of anal intercourse is alarming:

Anal Cancer
Chlamydia trachomatis
Cryptosporidium
Giardia lamblia
Herpes simplex virus
Human immunodeficiency virus
Human papilloma virus
Isospora belli
Microsporidia
Gonorrhea
Viral hepatitis types B & C
Syphilis25

Sexual transmission of some of these diseases is so rare in the exclusively heterosexual population as to be virtually unknown. Others, while found among heterosexual and homosexual practitioners, are clearly predominated by those involved in homosexual activity. Syphilis, for example is found among heterosexual and homosexual practitioners. But in 1999, King County, Washington (Seattle), reported that 85 percent of syphilis cases were among self-identified homosexual practitioners.26 And as noted above, syphilis among homosexual men is now at epidemic levels in San Francisco.27

A 1988 CDC survey identified 21 percent of all Hepatitis B cases as being homosexually transmitted while 18 percent were heterosexually transmitted.28 Since homosexuals comprise such a small percent of the population (only 1-3 percent),29 they have a significantly higher rate of infection than heterosexuals.30

Anal intercourse also puts men at significant risk for anal cancer. Anal cancer is the result of infection with some subtypes of human papilloma virus (HPV), which are known viral carcinogens. Data as of 1989 showed the rates of anal cancer in male homosexual practitioners to be 10 times that of heterosexual males, and growing. 30 Thus, the prevalence of anal cancer among gay men is of great concern. For those with AIDS, the rates are doubled.31

Other physical problems associated with anal intercourse are:

hemorrhoids
anal fissures
anorectal trauma
retained foreign bodies.32
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b. Oral-anal

There is an extremely high rate of parasitic and other intestinal infections documented among male homosexual practitioners because of oral-anal contact. In fact, there are so many infections that a syndrome called "the Gay Bowel" is described in the medical literature.33 "Gay bowel syndrome constitutes a group of conditions that occur among persons who practice unprotected anal intercourse, anilingus, or fellatio following anal intercourse."34 Although some women have been diagnosed with some of the gastrointestinal infections associated with "gay bowel," the vast preponderance of patients with these conditions are men who have sex with men.35

"Rimming" is the street name given to oralanal contact. It is because of this practice that intestinal parasites ordinarily found in the tropics are encountered in the bodies of American gay men. Combined with anal intercourse and other homosexual practices, "rimming" provides a rich opportunity for a variety of infections.

Men who have sex with men account for the lion's share of the increasing number of cases in America of sexually transmitted infections that are not generally spread through sexual contact. These diseases, with consequences that range from severe and even life-threatening to mere annoyances, include Hepatitis A,36 Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba histolytica,37 Epstein-Barr virus,38 Neisseria meningitides,39 Shigellosis, Salmonellosis, Pediculosis, scabies and Campylobacter.40 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) identified a 1991 outbreak of Hepatitis A in New York City, in which 78 percent of male respondents identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual.41While Hepatitis A can be transmitted by routes other than sexual, a preponderance of Hepatitis A is found in gay men in multiple states.42 Salmonella is rarely associated with sexual activity except among gay men who have oral-anal and oral-genital contact following anal intercourse.43 The most unsettling new discovery is the reported sexual transmission of typhoid. This water-borne disease, well known in the tropics, only infects 400 people each year in the United States, usually as a result of ingestion of contaminated food or water while abroad. But sexual transmission was diagnosed in Ohio in a series of male sex partners of one male who had traveled to Puerto Rico.44

In America, Human Herpes Virus 8 (called Herpes Type 8 or HHV-8) is a disease found exclusively among male homosexual practitioners. Researchers have long noted that men who contracted AIDS through homosexual behavior frequently developed a previously rare form of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. Men who contract HIV/AIDS through heterosexual sex or intravenous drug use rarely display this cancer. Recent studies confirm that Kaposi's sarcoma results from infection with HHV-8. The New England Journal of Medicine described one cohort in San Francisco where 38 percent of the men who admitted any homosexual contact within the previous five years tested positive for this virus while none of the exclusively heterosexual men tested positive. The study predicted that half of the men with both HIV and HHV-8 would develop the cancer within 10 years.45 The medical literature is currently unclear as to the precise types of sexual behavior that transmit HHV-8, but there is a suspicion that it may be transmitted via saliva.46

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c. Human Waste

Some gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes.47 This practice exposes the participants to all of the risks of anal-oral contact and many of the risks of analgenital contact.

d. Fisting

"Fisting" refers to the insertion of a hand or forearm into the rectum, and is far more damaging than anal intercourse. Tears can occur, along with incompetence of the anal sphincter. The result can include infections, inflammation and, consequently, enhanced susceptibility to future STDs. Twenty-two percent of homosexuals in one survey admitted to having participated in this practice.48

e. Sadism

The sexualization of pain and cruelty is described as sadism, named for the 18th Century novelist, the Marquis de Sade. His novel Justine describes repeated rapes and non-consensual whippings.49 Not all persons who practice sadism engage in the same activities. But a recent advertisement for a sadistic "conference" included a warning that participants might see "intentional infliction of pain [and] cutting of the skin with bleeding . . . ." Scheduled workshops included "Vaginal Fisting" (with a demonstration), "Sacred Sexuality and Cutting" with "a demonstration of a cutting with a live subject," "Rough Rope," and a "Body Harness" workshop that was to involve "demonstrating and coaching the tying of erotic body harnesses that involve the genitals, male and female."50 A similar event entitled the "Vicious Valentine" occurred near Chicago on Feb. 15-17, 2002.51 The medical consequences of such activities range from mild to fatal, depending upon the nature of the injuries inflicted.52 As many as 37 percent of homosexuals have practiced some form of sadism.53

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f. Conclusion

The consequences of homosexual activity have significantly altered the delivery of medical care to the population at-large. With the increased incidence of STD organisms in unexpected places, simple sore throat is no longer so simple. Doctors must now ask probing questions of their patients or risk making a misdiagnosis. The evaluation of a sore throat must now include questions about oral and anal sex. A case of hemorrhoids is no longer just a surgical problem. We must now inquire as to sexual practice and consider that anal cancer, rectal gonorrhea, or rectal chlamydia may be secreted in what deceptively appears to be "just hemorrhoids."54 Moreover, data shows that rectal and throat gonorrhea, for example, are without symptoms in 75 percent of cases.55

The impact of the health consequences of gay sex is not confined to homosexual practitioners. Even though nearly 11 million people in America are directly affected by cancer, compared to slightly more than three-quarters of a million with AIDS,56 AIDS spending per patient is more than seven times that for cancer.57 The inequity for diabetes and heart disease is even more striking.58 Consequently, the disproportionate amount of money spent on AIDS detracts from research into cures for diseases that affect more people.

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2. Female Homosexual Behavior

Lesbians are also at higher risk for STDs and other health problems than heterosexuals.59 However, the health consequences of lesbianism are less well documented than for male homosexuals. This is partly because the devastation of AIDS has caused male homosexual activity to draw the lion's share of medical attention. But it is also because there are fewer lesbians than gay men,60 and there is no evidence that lesbians practice the same extremes of same-sex promiscuity as gay men. The lesser amount of medical data does not mean, however, that female homosexual behavior is without recognized pathology. Much of the pathology is associated with heterosexual activity by lesbians.

Among the difficulties in establishing the pathologies associated with lesbianism is the problem of defining who is a lesbian.61 Study after study documents that the overwhelming majority of self-described lesbians have had sex with men.62 Australian researchers at an STD clinic found that only 7 percent of their lesbian sample had never had sexual contact with a male.63

Not only did lesbians commonly have sex with men, but with lots of men. They were 4.5 times as likely as exclusively heterosexual controls to have had more than 50 lifetime male sex partners.64 Consequently, the lesbians' median number of male partners was twice that of exclusively heterosexual women.65 Lesbians were three to four times more likely than heterosexual women to have sex with men who were high-risk for HIV disease-homosexual, bisexual, or IV drug-abusing men.66 The study "demonstrates that WSW [women who have sex with women] are more likely than non- WSW to engage in recognized HIV risk behaviours such as IDU [intravenous drug use], sex work, sex with a bisexual man, and sex with a man who injects drugs, confirming previous reports."67

Bacterial vaginosis, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, heavy cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, intravenous drug use, and prostitution were present in much higher proportions among female homosexual practitioners.68 Intravenous drug abuse was nearly six times as common in this group.69In one study of women who had sex only with women in the prior 12 months, 30 percent had bacterial vaginosis.70 Bacterial vaginosis is associated with higher risk for pelvic inflammatory disease and other sexually transmitted infections.71

In view of the record of lesbians having sex with many men, including gay men, and the increased incidence of intravenous drug use among lesbians, lesbians are not low risk for disease. Although researchers have only recently begun studying the transmission of STDs among lesbians, diseases such as "crabs," genital warts, chlamydia and herpes have been reported.72 Even women who have never had sex with men have been found to have HPV, trichomoniasis and anogenital warts.73

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C. Mental Health

1. Psychiatric Illness

Multiple studies have identified high rates of psychiatric illness, including depression, drug abuse and suicide attempts, among selfprofessed gays and lesbians.74 Some proponents of GLB rights have used these findings to conclude that mental illness is induced by other people's unwillingness to accept same-sex attraction and behavior as normal. They point to homophobia, effectively defined as any opposition to or critique of gay sex, as the cause for the higher rates of psychiatric illness, especially among gay youth.75 Although homophobia must be considered as a potential cause for the increase in mental health problems, the medical literature suggests other conclusions.

An extensive study in the Netherlands undermines the assumption that homophobia is the cause of increased psychiatric illness among gays and lesbians. The Dutch have been considerably more accepting of same-sex relationships than other Western countries — in fact, same-sex couples now have the legal right to marry in the Netherlands.76 So a high rate of psychiatric disease associated with homosexual behavior in the Netherlands means that the psychiatric disease cannot so easily be attributed to social rejection and homophobia.

The Dutch study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, did indeed find a high rate of psychiatric disease associated with same-sex sex.77 Compared to controls who had no homosexual experience in the 12 months prior to the interview, males who had any homosexual contact within that time period were much more likely to experience major depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Females with any homosexual contact within the previous 12 months were more often diagnosed with major depression, social phobia or alcohol dependence. In fact, those with a history of homosexual contact had higher rates of nearly all psychiatric pathologies measured in the study.78 The researchers found "that homosexuality is not only associated with mental health problems during adolescence and early adulthood, as has been suggested, but also in later life."79 Researchers actually fear that methodological features of "the study might underestimate the differences between homosexual and heterosexual people."80

The Dutch researchers concluded, "this study offers evidence that homosexuality is associated with a higher prevalence of psychiatric disorders. The outcomes are in line with findings from earlier studies in which less rigorous designs have been employed."81 The researchers offered no opinion as to whether homosexual behavior causes psychiatric disorders, or whether it is the result of psychiatric disorders.

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2. Reckless Sexual Behavior

Depression and drug abuse can lead to reckless sexual behavior, even among those who are most likely to understand the deadly risks. In an article that was part of a series on "AIDS at 20," the New York Times reported the risks that many gay men take. One night when a gay HIV prevention educator named Seth Watkins got depressed, he met an attractive stranger, had anal intercourse without a condom — and became HIV positive. In spite of his job training, the HIV educator nevertheless employed the psychological defense of "denial" in explaining his own sexual behavior:

"[L]ike an increasing number of gay men in San Francisco and elsewhere, Mr. Watkins sometimes still puts himself and possibly other people at risk. 'I don't like to think about it because I don't want to give anyone H.I.V.,' Mr. Watkins said."82
Another gay man named Vince, who had never before had anal intercourse without a condom, went to a sex club on the spur of the moment when he got depressed, and had unprotected sex:
"I was definitely in a period of depression . . . . And there was just something about that particular circumstance and that particular person. I don't know how to describe it. It just appealed to me; it made it seem like it was all right."83
Some of the men interviewed by the New York Times are deliberately reckless. One fatalistic gay man with HIV makes no apology for putting other men at risk:
"The prospect of going through the rest of your life having to cover yourself up every time you want to get intimate with someone is an awful one. . . . Now I've got H.I.V. and I don't have to worry about getting it," he said. "There is a part of me that's relieved. I was tired of always having to be careful, of this constant diligence that has to be paid to intimacy when intimacy should be spontaneous."84
After admitting to almost never using condoms he adds:
"There is no such thing as safe sex. . . . If people want to use condoms, they can. I didn't go out and purposely get H.I.V. Accidents happen."85
Other reports show similar disregard for the safety of self and others. A1998 study in Seattle found that 10 percent of HIV-positive men admitted they engaged in unprotected anal sex, and the percentage doubled in 2000.86 According to a study of men who attend gay "circuit" parties,87 the danger at such events is even greater. Ten percent of the men surveyed expected to become HIV-positive in their lifetime. Researchers discovered that 17 percent of the circuit party attendees surveyed were already HIV positive.88 Two thirds of those attending circuit parties had oral or anal sex, and 28 percent did not use condoms.89

In addition, drug use at circuit parties is ubiquitous. Although only 57 percent admit going to circuit parties to use drugs, 95 percent of the survey participants said they used psychoactive drugs at the most recent event they attended.90 There was a direct correlation between the number of drugs used during a circuit party weekend and the likelihood of unprotected anal sex.91 The researchers concluded that in view of their findings, "the likelihood of transmission of HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases among party attendees and secondary partners becomes a real public health concern."92

Good mental health would dictate foregoing circuit parties and other risky sex. But neither education nor adequate access to health care is a deterrent to such reckless behavior. "Research at the University of New South Wales found well-educated professional men in early middle age — those who experienced the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s — are most likely not to use a condom."93

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D. Shortened Life Span

The greater incidence of physical and mental health problems among gays and lesbians has serious consequences for length of life. While many are aware of the death toll from AIDS, there has been little public attention given to the magnitude of the lost years of life.

An epidemiological study from Vancouver, Canada of data tabulated between 1987 and 1992 for AIDS-related deaths reveals that male homosexual or bisexual practitioners lost up to 20 years of life expectancy. The study concluded that if 3 percent of the population studied were gay or bisexual, the probability of a 20-year-old gay or bisexual man living to 65 years was only 32 percent, compared to 78 percent for men in general.94 The damaging effects of cigarette smoking pale in comparison -cigarette smokers lose on average about 13.5 years of life expectancy.95

The impact on length of life may be even greater than reported in the Canadian study. First, HIV/AIDS is underreported by as much as 15-20 percent, so it is likely that not all AIDSrelated deaths were accounted for in the study.96 Second, there are additional major causes of death related to gay sex. For example, suicide rates among a San Francisco cohort were 3.4 times higher than the general U.S. male population in 1987.97 Other potentially fatal ailments such as syphilis, anal cancer, and Hepatitis B and C also affect gay and bisexual men disproportionately.98

E. "Monogamy"

Monogamy for heterosexual couples means at a minimum sexual fidelity. The most extensive survey of sex in America found that "a vast majority [of heterosexual married couples] are faithful while the marriage is intact."99 The survey further found that 94 percent of married people and 75 percent of cohabiting people had only one partner in the prior year.100 In contrast, long-term sexual fidelity is rare among GLB couples, particularly among gay males. Even during the coupling period, many gay men do not expect monogamy. A lesbian critic of gay males notes that:

"After a period of optimism about the longrange potential of gay men's one-on-one relationships, gay magazines are starting to acknowledge the more relaxed standards operating here, with recent articles celebrating the bigger bang of sex with strangers or proposing 'monogamy without fidelity'-the latest Orwellian formulation to excuse having your cake and eating it too."101
Gay men's sexual practices appear to be consistent with the concept of "monogamy without fidelity." Astudy of gay men attending circuit parties showed that 46 percent were coupled, that is, they claimed to have a "primary partner." Twenty-seven percent of the men with primary partners "had multiple sex partners (oral or anal) during their most recent circuit party weekend . . . ."102 For gay men, sex outside the primary relationship is ubiquitous even during the first year. Gay men reportedly have sex with someone other than their partner in 66 percent of relationships within the first year, rising to approximately 90 percent if the relationship endures over five years.103 And the average gay or lesbian relationship is short lived. In one study, only 15 percent of gay men and 17.3 percent of lesbians had relationships that lasted more than three years.104 Thus, the studies reflect very little long-term monogamy in GLB relationships.

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II. CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF PROMISCUITY

"Don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put up." ~ African proverb

The societal implications of the unrestrained sexual activity described above are devastating. The ideal of sexual activity being limited to marriage, always defined as male-female, has been a fence erected in all civilizations around the globe.105 Throughout history, many people have climbed over the fence, engaging in premarital, extramarital and homosexual sex. Still, the fence stands; the limits are visible to all. Climbing over the fence, metaphorically, has always been recognized as a breach of those limits, even by the breachers themselves. No civilization can retain its vitality for multiple generations after removing the fence.106

But now social activists are saying that there should be no fence, and that to destroy the fence is an act of liberation.107 If the fence is torn down, there is no visible boundary to sexual expression. If gay sex is socially acceptable, what logical reason can there be to deny social acceptance of adultery, polygamy, or pedophilia? The polygamist movement already has support from some of the advocates for GLB rights.108 And some in the psychological profession are floating the idea that maybe pedophilia is not so damaging to children after all.109

Lesbian social critic Camille Paglia observes, "history shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence."110 Gay author Gabriel Rotello writes of the changes in homosexual behavior in the last century:

"Most accounts of male-on-male sex from the early decades of this century [20th] cite oral sex, and less often masturbation, as the predominant forms of activity, with the acknowledged homosexual fellating or masturbating his partner. Comparatively fewer accounts refer to anal sex. My own informal survey of older gay men who were sexually active prior to World War II gives credence to the idea that anal sex, especially anal sex with multiple partners, was considerably less common than it later became."111
Not only has the practice of anal sex increased, condom use has declined 20 percent and multi-partner sex has doubled in the last seven years,112 despite billions of dollars spent on HIV prevention campaigns. "In many cases, the prevention slogans that galvanized gay men in the early years of the epidemic now fall on deaf ears."113 As should be expected, the health-care costs resulting from gay promiscuity are substantial.114
Social approval of gay sex leads to an increase in such behavior. As early as 1993, Newsweek reported that the growing media presence and social acceptance of homosexual behavior was leading to teenager experimentation to the extent that it was "becoming chic."115 A more recent report stated that "the way gays and lesbians appear in the media may make some people more comfortable acting on homosexual impulses."116 In addition, one of the goals of GLB advocates' quest for domestic partner benefits from employers is to motivate more gays and lesbians "to come out of the closet."117 If, as suggested above, being "out" results in a greater incidence of promiscuity, employer decisions to provide domestic partner benefits may have a negative impact on employee health. Indeed, giving gays and lesbians the social approval they desire may ultimately lead to an early death for employees who otherwise might have restrained their sexual behavior.

Research designed to prove that gays and lesbians are "born that way" has come up empty — there is no scientific evidence that being gay or lesbian is genetically determined.118 Even researcher Dean Hamer, who once hoped he had identified a "gay gene," admits "there is a lot more than just genes going on."119

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CONCLUSION

It is clear that there are serious medical consequences to same-sex behavior. Identification with a GLB community appears to lead to an increase in promiscuity, which in turn leads to a myriad of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and even early death. A compassionate response to requests for social approval and recognition of GLB relationships is not to assure gays and lesbians that homosexual relationships are just like heterosexual ones, but to point out the health risks of gay sex and promiscuity. Approving same-sex relationships is detrimental to employers, employees and society in general.

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APPENDIX A

Definitional Impediments to Research

Unfortunately, endeavors to assess the actual practices and the health consequences of male and female homosexual behavior are hampered by imprecise definitions. For many, being gay or lesbian or bisexual is a political identity that does not necessarily correspond to sexual behavior. And investigators find that sexual behavior fluctuates over time:

"[P]eople often change their sexual behavior during their lifetimes, making it impossible to state that a particular set of behaviors defines a person as gay. A man who has sex with men today, for example, might not have done so 10 years ago."120
Defining the terms becomes even more difficult when people who identify as gay or lesbian enter heterosexual relationships. Joanne Loulan, a well-known lesbian, has talked openly about her two-year relationship with a man: "'I come from this background that sex is an activity, it's not an identity,' says Loulan. 'It was funny for a while, but then it turned out to be something more connected, more deep. Something more important. And that's when my life started really going topsy turvy.'" While critics complain that "You can't be a lesbian and be having sex with men," Loulan sees no contradiction in the fact that she "adamantly refuses to call herself a bisexual, to give up the lesbian identity."121
Several high-profile lesbian media stars that have abandoned lesbianism further illustrate the difficulty in defining homosexuality. An article about the now defunct couple, Anne Heche and Ellen Degeneres, said, "Although the pair never publicly discussed the reason for their breakup, it has been heavily rumored that Heche decided to go back to heterosexuality."122 Heche married a man on Sept. 1, 2001.123

As recently as June 2000, pop-music star Sinead O'Connor said, "I'm a lesbian . . . although I haven't been very open about that, and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a lesbian. But I actually am a lesbian."124 Then, shocking the gay world that applauded her "coming out," O'Connor's sexual identity fluctuated again when she withdrew from participating in a lesbian music festival because of her marriage to British Press Association reporter Nick Sommerlad.125

Although women get most of the press coverage of fluctuating between same-sex and heterosexual relationships, men can experience similar fluidity. Gay author John Stoltenberg has lived with a lesbian, Andrea Dworkin, since 1974.126 And a 2000 survey in Australia found that 19 percent of gay men reported having sex with a woman in the six months prior to the survey.127 This fluctuation in sexual "orientation" inhibits the creation of a fixed definition of homosexuality. As one group of researchers stated the problem:

"Does a man who has homosexual sex in prison count as a homosexual? Does a man who left his wife of twenty years for a gay lover count as a homosexual or heterosexual? Do you count the number of years he spent with his wife as compared to his lover? Does the married woman who had sex with her college roommate a decade ago count? Do you assume that one homosexual experience defines someone as gay for all time?"128
Despite the difficulty in defining homosexuality, the one thing that is clear is that those who engage in same-sex practices or identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual constitute a very small percentage of the population. The most reliable studies indicate that 1-3 percent of people — and probably less than 2 percent — consider themselves to be gay, lesbian or bisexual, or currently practice same-sex sex.129

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Endnotes

"Tracking the Hidden Epidemics: Trends in STDs in the United States, 2000," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), available at www.cdc.gov.
Becky Birtha, "Gay Parents and the Adoption Option," The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 04, 2002, www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 2787531.htm; Grant Pick, "Make Room for Daddy — and Poppa," The Chicago Tribune Internet Edition, March 24, 2002, www.chicagotribune.com/features/magazine/chi- 0203240463mar24.story
Ellen C. Perrin, et al., "Technical Report: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents," Pediatrics, 109(2): 341-344 (2002).
Gabriel Rotello, Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men, p. 112, New York: Penguin Group, 1998 (quoting gay writer Michael Lynch).
Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A study of Diversity Among Men and Women, p. 308, Table 7, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
Leon McKusick, et al., "Reported Changes in the Sexual Behavior of Men at Risk for AIDS, San Francisco, 1982-84 — the AIDS Behavioral Research Project," Public Health Reports, 100(6): 622-629, p. 625, Table 1 (November- December 1985). In 1982 respondents reported an average of 4.7 new partners in the prior month; in 1984, respondents reported an average of 2.5 new partners in the prior month.
"Increases in Unsafe Sex and Rectal Gonorrhea among Men Who Have Sex with Men — San Francisco, California, 1994-1997," Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, CDC, 48(03): 45-48, p. 45 (January 29, 1999).
This was evident by the late 80's and early 90's. Jeffrey A. Kelly, PhD, et al., "Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome/ Human Immunodeficiency Virus Risk Behavior Among Gay Men in Small Cities," Archives of Internal Medicine, 152: 2293-2297, pp. 2295-2296 (November 1992); Donald R. Hoover, et al., "Estimating the 1978-1990 and Future Spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 in Subgroups of Homosexual Men," American Journal of Epidemiology, 134(10): 1190-1205, p. 1203 (1991).
A lesbian pastor made this assertion during a question and answer session that followed a presentation the author made on homosexual health risks at the Chatauqua Institute in Western New York, summer 2001.
Paul Van de Ven, et al., "Facts & Figures: 2000 Male Out Survey," p. 20 & Table 20, monograph published by National Centre in HIV Social Research Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales, February 2001.
Rotello, pp. 43-46.
Ibid., pp. 165-172.
Hoover, et al., Figure 3.
"Basic Statistics," CDC — Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, June 2001, www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.htm. (Nearly 8% (50,066) of men with AIDS had sex with men and used intravenous drugs. These men are included in the 64% figure (411,933) of 649,186 men who have been diagnosed with AIDS.)
Figures from a study presented at the Infectious Diseases Society of America meeting in San Francisco and reported by Christopher Heredia, "Big spike in cases of syphilis in S.F.: Gay, bisexual men affected most," San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2001, www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/26/MN7489 3.DTL.
Catherine Hutchinson, et al., "Characteristics of Patients with Syphilis Attending Baltimore STD Clinics," Archives of Internal Medicine, 151: 511-516, p. 513 (1991).
Katherine Fethers, Caron Marks, et al., "Sexually transmitted infections and risk behaviours in women who have sex with women," Sexually Transmitted Infections, 76(5): 345- 349, p. 347 (October 2000).
James Price, et al., "Perceptions of cervical cancer and pap smear screening behavior by Women's Sexual Orientation," Journal of Community Health, 21(2): 89-105 (1996); Daron Ferris, et al., "A Neglected Lesbian Health Concern: Cervical Neoplasia," The Journal of Family Practice, 43(6): 581-584, p. 581 (December 1996); C. Skinner, J. Stokes, et al., "A Case-Controlled Study of the Sexual Health Needs of Lesbians," Sexually Transmitted Infections, 72(4): 277-280, Abstract (1996).
The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) recently published a press release entitled "Ten Things Gay Men Should Discuss with Their Health Care Providers" (July 17, 2002), www.glma.org/news/ releases/n02071710gaythings.html. The list includes: HIV/AIDS (Safe Sex), Substance Use, Depression/ Anxiety, Hepatitis Immunization, STDs, Prostate/ Testicular/Colon Cancer, Alcohol, Tobacco, Fitness and Anal Papilloma.
R. R. Wilcox, "Sexual Behaviour and Sexually Transmitted Disease Patterns in Male Homosexuals," British Journal of Venereal Diseases, 57(3): 167-169, 167 (1981).
Robert T. Michael, et al., Sex in America: a Definitive Survey, pp. 140-141, Table 11, Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1994; Rotello, pp. 75-76.
Rotello, p. 92.
Jon M. Richards, J. Michael Bedford, and Steven S. Witkin, "Rectal Insemination Modifies Immune Responses in Rabbits," Science, 27(224): 390-392 (1984).
S. S. Witkin and J. Sonnabend, "Immune Responses to Spermatozoa in Homosexual Men," Fertility and Sterility, 39(3): 337-342, pp. 340-341 (1983).
Anne Rompalo, "Sexually Transmitted Causes of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Homosexual Men," Medical Clinics of North America, 74(6): 1633-1645 (November 1990); "Anal Health for Men and Women," LGBTHealthChannel, www.gayhealthchannel.com/analhealth/; "Safer Sex (MSM) for Men who Have Sex with Men," LGBTHealthChannel, www.gayhealthchannel.com/stdmsm/.
"Resurgent Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Disease Among Men Who Have Sex With Men — King County, Washington, 1997-1999," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, 48(35): 773-777 (September 10, 1999).
Heredia, "Big spike in cases of syphilis in S.F.: Gay, bisexual men affected most."
"Changing Patterns of Groups at High Risk for Hepatitis B in the United States," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, 37(28): 429-432, p. 437 (July 22, 1988). Hepatitis B and C are viral diseases of the liver.
Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, et al., The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States, p. 293, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Michael, et al., p. 176; David Forman and Clair Chilvers, "Sexual Behavior of Young and Middle-Aged Men in England and Wales," British Medical Journal, 298: 1137-1142 (1989); and Gary Remafedi, et al., "Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescents," Pediatrics, 89: 714-721 (1992). See appendix A.
Mads Melbye, Charles Rabkin, et al., "Changing patterns of anal cancer incidence in the United States, 1940-1989," American Journal of Epidemiology, 139: 772-780, p. 779, Table 2 (1994).
James Goedert, et al., for the AIDS-Cancer Match Study Group, "Spectrum of AIDS-associated malignant disorders," The Lancet, 351: 1833-1839, p. 1836 (June 20, 1998).
"Anal Health for Men and Women," LGBTHealthChannel, www.gayhealthchannel.com/analhealth/; J. E. Barone, et al., "Management of Foreign Bodies and Trauma of the Rectum," Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, 156(4): 453-457 (April 1983).
Henry Kazal, et al., "The gay bowel syndrome: Clinicopathologic correlation in 260 cases," Annals of Clinical and Laboratory Science, 6(2): 184-192 (1976).
Glen E. Hastings and Richard Weber, "Use of the term 'Gay Bowel Syndrome,'" reply to a letter to the editor, American Family Physician, 49(3): 582 (1994).
Ibid.; E. K. Markell, et al., "Intestinal Parasitic Infections in Homosexual Men at a San Francisco Health Fair," Western Journal of Medicine, 139(2): 177-178 (August, 1983).
"Hepatitis A among Homosexual Men — United States, Canada, and Australia," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, 41(09): 155, 161-164 (March 06, 1992).
Rompalo, p. 1640.
H. Naher, B. Lenhard, et al., "Detection of Epstein-Barr virus DNA in anal scrapings from HIV-positive homosexual men," Archives of Dermatological Research, 287(6): 608- 611, Abstract (1995).
B. L. Carlson, N. J. Fiumara, et al., "Isolation of Neisseria meningitidis from anogenital specimens from homosexual men," Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 7(2): 71-73 (April 1980).
P. Paulet and G. Stoffels, "Maladies anorectales sexuellement transmissibles" ["Sexually-Transmissible Anorectal Diseases"], Revue Medicale Bruxelles, 10(8): 327-334, Abstract (October 10, 1989).
"Hepatitis A among Homosexual Men — United States, Canada, and Australia," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC, 41(09): 155, 161-164 (March 06, 1992).
Ibid.
C. M. Thorpe and G. T. Keutsch, "Enteric bacterial pathogens: Shigella, Salmonella, Campylobacter," in K. K. Holmes, P. A. Mardh, et al., (Eds.), Sexually Transmitted Diseases (3rd edition), p. 549, New York: McGraw-Hill Health Professionals Division, 1999.
Tim Bonfield, "Typhoid traced to sex encounters," Cincinnati Enquirer, April 26, 2001; Erin McClam, "Health Officials Document First Sexual Transmission of Typhoid in U.S.," Associated Press, April 25, 2001, www.thebody.com/ cdc/news_updates_archive/apr26_01/typhoid.html. A representative of the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch, Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, confirmed this report and provided a link to the AP story on October 4, 2002.
Jeffrey Martin, et al., "Sexual Transmission and the Natural History of Human Herpes Virus 8 Infection," New England Journal of Medicine, 338(14): 948-954, p. 952 (1998).
Alexandra M. Levine, "Kaposi's Sarcoma: Far From Gone," paper presented at 5th International AIDS Malignancy Conference, April 23-25, 2001, Bethesda, Maryland, www.medscape.com/viewarticle/420749.
"Paraphilias," Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision, p. 576, Washington: American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Karla Jay and Allen Young, The Gay Report: Lesbians and Gay Men Speak Out About Sexual Experiences and Lifestyles, pp. 554-555, New York: Summit Books (1979).
Jay and Young, pp. 554-555.
Sade, Marquis de, Justine or Good Conduct Well Chastised (1791), New York: Grove Press (1965).
Michigan Rope internet advertisement for "Bondage and Beyond," which was scheduled for February 9-10, 2002, near Detroit, Michigan, www.michiganrope.com/ MichiganRopeWorkshop.html. The explicit nature of the advertisement was changed following unexpected publicity, and the hotel where the conference was scheduled ultimately canceled it. Marsha Low, "Hotel Ties Noose Around 2-Day Bondage Meeting," Detroit Free Press, January 25, 2002, www.freep.com/news/locoak/ nrope25_20020125.htm.
Allyson Smith, "Ramada to host 'Vicious Valentine' Event," WorldNet Daily, February 14, 2002, www.worldnetdaily. com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26453; "Vicious Valentine 5 Celebrates Mardi Gras, Feb 15-17, 2002," www.leatherquest.com/events/vv2002.htm.
The sadistic rape of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising on September 26, 1999, left him dead. See Andrew Sullivan, "The Death of Jesse Dirkhising," The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 1, 2001.
Jay and Young, pp. 554-555.
Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, "MSM: Clinician's Guide to Incorporating Sexual Risk Assessment in Routine Visits," www.glma.org/medical/clinical/msm_assessment. html.
S. Bygdeman, "Gonorrhea in men with homosexual contacts. Serogroups of isolated gonococcal strains related to antibiotic susceptibility, site of infection, and symptoms," British Journal of Venereal Diseases, 57(5): 320-324, Abstract (October 1981).
As of January 1, 1999, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated the cancer prevalence in the United States to be 8.9 million. "Estimated US Cancer Prevalence Counts: Who Are Our Cancer Survivors in the US?," Cancer Control & Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, April 2002, www.cancercontrol.cancer.gov/ocs/prevalence. In 1999, the American Cancer Society (ACS) estimated 1,221,800 new cancer cases in the US and an estimated 563,100 cancer related deaths, "Cancer Facts and Figures 1999," p. 4, American Cancer Society, Inc., 1999, www.cancer.org/ downloads/STT/F&F99.pdf; in 2000, the ACS estimated 1,220,100 new cancer cases and 552,200 deaths from cancer, "Cancer Facts and Figures 2000," p. 4, American Cancer Society, Inc., 2000, www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/ F&F00.pdf; in 2001, the ACS estimated a total number of 1,268,000 new cases of cancer and 553,400 deaths, "Cancer Facts and Figures 2001," p. 5, American Cancer Society, Inc., 2001, www.cancer.org/downloads/STT/ F&F2001.pdf. This results in an estimated growth of 2,041,200 new cancer cases over the past three years and an estimated 10,941,200 people with cancer as of January 1, 2002. In 2001 there were 793,025 reported AIDS cases. "Basic Statistics," CDC — Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, June 2001, www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.htm.
The federal spending for AIDS research in 2001 was $2,247,000,000, while the spending for cancer research was not even double that at $4,376,400,000. "Funding For Research Areas of Interest," National Institute of Health, 2002, www4.od.nih.gov/officeofbudget/ FundingResearchAreas.htm.
Ibid.; "Fast Stats Ato Z: Diabetes," CDC — National Center for Health Statistics, June 04, 2002, www.cdc.gov/nchs/ fastats/diabetes.htm; "Fast Stats A to Z: Heart Disease," CDC — National Center for Health Statistics, June 06, 2002, www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/heart.htm.
Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Press Release, "Ten Things Lesbians Should Discuss with Their Health Care Providers" (July 17, 2002), www.glma.org/news/ releases/n02071710lesbianthings.html. The list includes Breast Cancer, Depression/Anxiety, Gynecological Cancer, Fitness, Substance Use, Tobacco, Alcohol, Domestic Violence, Osteoporosis and Heart Health.
Michael, et al., p. 176 ("about 1.4 percent of women said they thought of themselves as homosexual or bisexual and about 2.8% of the men identified themselves in this way").
See Appendix A.
Skinner, et al., Abstract; Ferris, et al. p. 581; James Price, et al., p. 90; see Appendix A.
Katherine Fethers, et al., "Sexually transmitted infections and risk behaviours in women who have sex with women," Sexually Transmitted Infections, 76(5): 345-349, p. 348 (2000).
Ibid., p. 347.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 348.
Ibid., p. 347, Table 1; Susan D. Cochran, et al., "Cancer- Related Risk Indicators and Preventive Screening Behaviors Among Lesbians and Bisexual Women," American Journal of Public Health, 91(4): 591-597 (April 2001); Juliet Richters, Sara Lubowitz, et al., "HIV risks among women in contact with Sydney's gay and lesbian community," Venereology, 11(3): 35-38 (1998); Juliet Richters, Sarah Bergin, et al., "Women in Contact with the Gay and Lesbian Community: Sydney Women and Sexual Health Survey 1996 and 1998," National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales, 1999.
Fethers, et al., p. 347 and Table 1.
Barbara Berger, Shelley Kolton, et al., "Bacterial vaginosis in lesbians: a sexually transmitted disease," Clinical Infectious Diseases, 21: 1402-1405 (1995).
E. H. Koumans, et al., "Preventing adverse sequelae of Bacterial Vaginosis: a Public Health Program and Research Agenda," Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 28(5): 292-297 (May 2001); R. L. Sweet, "Gynecologic Conditions and Bacterial Vaginosis: Implications for the Non-Pregnant Patient," Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 8(3): 184-190 (2000).
Kathleen M. Morrow, Ph.D., et al., "Sexual Risk in Lesbians and Bisexual Women," Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, 4(4): 159-165, p. 161 (2000).
Ibid., p. 159.
For example, Judith Bradford, Caitlin Ryan, and Esther D. Rothblum, "National Lesbian Health Care Survey: Implications for Mental Health Care," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(2): 228-242 (1994); Richard C. Pillard, "Sexual orientation and mental disorder," Psychiatric Annals, 18(1): 52-56 (1988); see also Mubarak S. Dahir, "The Gay Community's New Epidemic," Daily News (June 5, 2000), www.gaywired.com/story detail.cfm?Section=12&ID=148&ShowDate=1.
Katherine A. O'Hanlan, M.D., et al., "Homophobia As a Health Hazard," Report of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, pp. 3, 5, www.ohanlan.com/phobiahzd.htm; Laura Dean, et al., "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health: Findings & Concerns," Journal of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, 4(3): 102-151, pp. 102, 116 (2000).
"Netherlands Ends Discrimination in Civil Marriage: Gays to Wed," Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Press Release, March 30, 2001, http://lambdalegal.org/cgibin/ pages/documents/record?record=814.
Theo Sandfort, Ron de Graaf, et al., "Same-sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders," Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(1): 85-91, p. 89 and Table 2 (January 2001).
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 90 (emphasis added).
Ibid.
Erica Goode, "With Fears Fading, More Gays Spurn Old Preventive Message," New York Times, August 19, 2001.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
"Officials Voice Alarm Over Halt in AIDS Decline," New York Times, August 14, 2001.
"A uniform definition of a circuit party does not exist, partly because such parties continue to evolve. However, a circuit party tends to be a multi-event weekend that occurs each year at around the same time and in the same town . . . ." Gordon Mansergh, Grant Colfax, et al., "The Circuit Party Men's Health Survey: Findings and Implications for Gay and Bisexual Men," American Journal of Public Health, 91(6): 953-958, p. 953 (June 2001).
Ibid., p. 955.
Ibid., p. 956.
Ibid., pp. 956-957, Tables 2 & 3.
Ibid., pp. 956-957.
Ibid., p. 957. The authors' recommendation was more education.
Julie Robotham, "Safe sex by arrangement as gay men reject condoms," Sydney Morning Herald, June 7, 2001. Data source: 2000 Male Out Survey, National Centre in HIV Social Research, Australia.
R. S. Hogg, S. A. Strathdee, et al., "Modeling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men," International Journal of Epidemiology, 26(3): 657-661, p. 659 (1997). Death as the result of HIV infection has dropped significantly since 1996. "Life Expectancy Hits New High in 2000; Mortality Declines for Several Leading Causes of Death," CDC News Release, October 10, 2001, www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/01news/mort2k.htm. Nevertheless, it remains a significant factor in shortened life expectancy for homosexual practitioners.
Press Release, Smoking costs nation $150 billion each year in health costs, lost productivity, CDC, Office of Communication, April 12, 2002, www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/ pressrel/r020412.htm.
Hogg, et al., p. 660.
Ibid.
"Hepatitis A vaccination of men who have sex with men — Atlanta, Georgia, 1996-1997," Morbidity and Mortality Report, CDC, 47(34): 708-711 (September 4, 1998).
Robert T. Michael, et al., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 101.
Camille Paglia, "I'll take religion over gay culture," Salon.com online magazine, June 1998, www.frontpagemag.com/archives/guest_column/ paglia/gayculture.htm.
Gordon Mansergh, Grant Colfax, et al., p. 955.
Joseph Harry, Gay Couples, p. 116, New York: Praeger Books, 1984.
Marcel T. Saghir, M.D. and Eli Robins, M.D., Male and Female Homosexuality: A Comprehensive Investigation, p. 57 Table 4.13, p. 225 Table 12.10, Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1973.
The existence of limited homosexual relationships in primitive cultures, or even extensive homosexuality in declining civilizations, such as those cited by advocates of same-sex marriage, does not challenge the existence of a prevailing norm. See, for example, William N. Eskridge, Jr., The Case for Same-Sex Marriage, Chapter 2, New York: The Free Press, 1996.
Joseph D. Unwin, "Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behaviour," pp. 18-19, reprint of Oxford University Press publication of speech given before the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, March 27, 1935.
For example, see the website of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, Inc., www.ncsfreedom.org.
"The ACLU believes that criminal and civil laws prohibiting or penalizing the practice of plural marriage violate constitutional protections . . . ." 1992 Policy Guide of the ACLU, Policy #91, p. 175.
Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002; Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman, "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," Psychological Bulletin, 124(1): 22-53 (July 1998).
Paglia, June 23, 1998.
Rotello, p. 42.
Goode, August 19, 2001.
Ibid.
See Michael Hamrick, The Hidden Costs of Domestic Partner Benefits, pp. 3-4 (Corporate Resource Council, 2002).
David Gelman, et al., "Tune In, Come Out," Newsweek, p. 70, November 8, 1993.
"Iowa study suggests tolerance of homosexuals is growing," Associated Press, March 23, 2001.
Sally Kohn, The Domestic Partnership Organizing Manual for Employee Benefits, p. 1, the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, www.ngltf.org/ downloads/dp-/dp_99.pdf.
John Horgan, "Gay Genes, Revisited," Scientific American, p. 26, November 1995.
Matthew Brelis, "The Fading 'Gay Gene,'" The Boston Globe, March 20, 2002, p. C1.
Michael, et al., p. 172.
Lynn Scherr, "Lesbian Leader Loves a Man," ABCNews.com, April 17, 1998.
"Former Lesbian Anne Heche Engaged to Cameraman," ABCNews.com, June 1, 2001 (emphasis added), reprinted at www.gaywired.com/index.cfm?linkPage=/storydetail.cf m&Section=68&ID=5304.
"The Facts: Anne Heche," Eonline.msn, April 1, 2002, www.eonline.com/Facts/People/Bio/0,128,31319,00.html.
"Sinead O'Connor to Marry a Man," Reuters, June 27, 2000, www.q.co.za/2001.2001.06.27-sinead.html.
"Sinead Drops out of Wotapalava Tour," JAM! Music, May 31, 2001, www.canoe.ca/JamMusicArtistsO/oconnor_ sinead.html.
John Stoltenberg, "Living with Andrea Dworkin," Lambda Book Report, May/June 1994, reprinted at www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LivingWithAnd rea.html.
Julie Robotham, "Safe sex by arrangement as gay men reject condoms," The Sydney Morning Herald, June 7, 2001. Data source: "2000 Male Out Survey," National Centre in HIV Social Research, Australia.
Michael, et al., p. 172.
Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, et al., The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States, p. 293, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994; Michael, et al., p. 176; David Forman and Clair Chilvers, "Sexual Behavior of Young and Middle-Aged Men in England and Wales," British Medical Journal, 298: 1137-1142 (1989); and Gary Remafedi, et al., "Demography of Sexual Orientation in Adolescents," Pediatrics, 89: 714-721 (1992).
For additional information about how corporate policies can improve employees' health as well as their work-life balance, please contact Paul Weber at the Corporate Resource Council, (480) 444-0030.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Dr. John R. Diggs, Jr., "The Health Risks of Gay Sex." Corporate Resource Council (2002).

All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reprint this document in its entirety, with proper attribution.

THE AUTHOR

Dr. John R. Diggs, Jr. is a practicing Internist with first-hand experience in treating many of the problems described in this paper. He also travels and lectures on a variety of medical topics to audiences around the world.

Why do the Leftists and Gay Culture’s Rejection of Objective Truth leads to Sexually Abusing Children?

2009-11-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

By Fred Martinez

Professor Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture through his concept of values.

Obama is a Nietzschean as Jonah Goldberg shows:

“Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is ‘being out of alignment with my values.’ Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn't being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be a sinner because his values hold that it's OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama's — unless he really is our Savior.”
[http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/08/obama-the-postm.html, http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/2008/06/06/barack-obama-the-2004-god-factor-interview-transcript/]

Bloom said that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche's influence on public education – and he could have said 30 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth. Bloom said relativism "is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society."

The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche's will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement "relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution "corrupt" and demanded a "black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted."

The liberal "Catholics" speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche's will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.

According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist "clerical homosexual network" extends to "bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders."

The "real" Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.

Meanwhile, the Nietzschean "Catholics" are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ... [and] under no circumstances can they be approved."
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Cath
olic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.

Norman Mailer, in his book "Prisoner of Sex," shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:

"So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. ... Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb ... no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator."

This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only "currency" left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.

Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.

Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.

Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.

Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with sex and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law. If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law? If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their "inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society," as Bloom said.

If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian power tactics of prison homosexuals. The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the "culture" of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.

The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don't accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn't accept the new "culture" and isn't a "team player."
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in "Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited":

"It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going 'to change the culture.'

"However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to 'convert' that the prisoner did. ... Consider, for example, what it means to impose a 'culture of teamwork' based on 'openness and mutual trust' in an individualistic society."

By using this process, the leftists with the media's marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a "mob mentality," which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the "elite" because they accept the "culture of teamwork" and have "openness" to the new definitions.

These persons wishing to be part of the "culture" or "team" are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:

"'Cognitive redefinition' involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition."

Professor Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture with it's "semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad." He said, "Words such as 'charisma,' 'lifestyle,' 'commitment,' 'identity,' and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche ... are now practically American slang."

But the most important Nietzschean slang word is "values."

"Values" are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.

One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.

Nietzsche's philosophy is summed up by Bloom as
Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one's oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.

As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or "posits" one's values on a meaningless world.

Previous to Freud's psychoanalysis, Nietzsche's writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche "had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live."

Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was " profoundly influenced by Nietzsche," according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.

The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.

Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to 'become his real self.' Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.

Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously "unscientific" model of the "symbolic language of the unconscious."

Freud's pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung's unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the "active imagination" to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.

He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.

Many Christians thought this "language of the soul" was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn't understand was that Jung's theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.

Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.

Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung "not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung's active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called 'gods' (archetypes),' and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly."

Within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought, a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist is moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner "beings" that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan "gods."
As C.S. Lewis predicted in "The Screwtape Letters," we are moving to a "scientific" paganism. C.S. Lewis' name for the "scientific" pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner "beings" was the "Forces."

In "The Screwtape Letters," his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" – then the end of the war will be in sight.

Some of the largest audiences for this "scientific" paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.

Many Christians are using Jung's active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous "because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner 'beings' accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones."

If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner "beings," uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner "being" is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.

In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner "being" (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.

Jung's autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing 'voices.' In his autobiography he said his home was "... crammed full of spirits ... they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe."

During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, "The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." Keep that word "potential" in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.

Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, "Master morality," which was different from Christian morality – or "slave morality," as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.

In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, "Zarathustra," he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.

After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with "Individual psychology," which maintains that the individual strives for what he called "superiority" but now is called "self-realization" or "self-actualization," and which came from Nietzsche's ideas of striving and self-creation.
The "human potential movement" and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of "potential" teach the superior man.

Edvard Munch said:

Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche's philosophical idea of "will to power" into the psychological concept of self-actualization. Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers's Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. ... Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche's idea of "will to power" and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.

Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of "scientific" psychology. Kearns said:

The methods are based on "the group therapy technique" first developed in America in the 1970's by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group "facilitator". The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator's approach is "value free". There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an "outsider" and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such "judgemental intolerance".

If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in "teaching religious and moral education," then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of "scientific" paganism replacing Christianity.

Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose "approach" was "value free" – that is, there was "no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question."

In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, "THE WEDGE! You can't do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. ... Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group."

Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, "bases his 'Wedge Model' on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble." Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, "Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes."

Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers, Maslow was always a revolutionary. ... In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, "In Eupsychian Management: A Journal," [Maslow said]: "I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker ... as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch."
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don't believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.

It is understandable that atheists such as Maslow , Adler and Gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since all have the basic assumption that there is no right or wrong.

But that Christians and priests hold these assumptions is a disgrace. The denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the headlines of the Boston catastrophe and other dioceses

Spider-Man vs. Porn

2009-11-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

By Fred Martinez

Steve Ditko, the original artist and co-creator of the Spider-Man comic, which is now a record-breaking hit movie, is the Greta Garbo of comic books.

Refusing to give interviews for 20 years, he recently refused interviews for major articles about him by the Los Angeles Times and one of Canada's leading newspapers, the National Post.

Ditko, however, explained his philosophy of art in a narrative on a 1987 video titled "The Masters of Comic Book Art," hosted by author Harlan Ellison. In his introduction, Ellison dismissed Ditko's plea that heroes in art and literature be measured by the moral courage shown in objective good vs. evil choices.

The artist now seems prophetic for saying in the show that if we glorify the anti-hero in art, then anti-life and violence will come into our culture. The anti-heroes of the Columbine-like killings in public schools and the Sept. 11 terrorists seem to justify his claim.

What our American and global culture needs are heroes as models. In the program, the artist and co-creator of Spider-Man says, "Aristotle said that art is more important than history. History tells how man did act. Art shows how man should and could act. It creates a model.

"The self-flawed and anti-hero provide the heroic label without the need to act better. A crooked cop, a flawed cop, is not a valid model of a good law enforcer," Ditko said in the program. "An anti-cop corrupts the legal good, and an anti-hero corrupts the moral good."

Spider-Man as a Model for Good

The power of Ditko's art has in fact influenced youth toward good. In the fall 2001 issue of the Jesuit, a teenager named Pedro tells how he was inspired to go to college by Spider-Man's message.

"Spider-Man got his power when he was a teenager and wasn't sure how to use it," Pedro explains. "So his grandfather [actually uncle] told him, 'With greater power comes greater responsibility.' That's the way it is at Cristo Rey. We're learning to make the world a better place. We're going to go to college and give a whole lot back from what we've been given."

Some are saying that Spider-Man is even a type of Christ. In his essay for the video, Ditko seems at times to be describing Spider-Man as well as Christ. He said, "Early comic book heroes were not about life as it is, but creation of how a man with a clear understanding of right and wrong and the moral courage to choose acts even if branded an outlaw."

On the Internet, I found the testimony of a man who used Ditko's art to turn to God. Mark Dukes, now a deacon of the African Orthodox Church, said:

"My father wasn't around. My mother was a single parent. It was a vacuum in my life. Who am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to be?

"For me, Spider-Man really resonated. Spider-Man's alter ego was Peter Parker, who was a nerd. And I didn't feel like I was a cool guy either. Spider-Man was disliked and feared. Everyone thought he was a crook, but he was a good guy. No one gave him any respect but he continued to do good even in the face of all that.

"He would sacrifice himself, get beat up and then people would say 'Ahhh. Spider-Man! Run. He's going to do something to us!' And really he had just now saved the world. That is very saintly.

"For me, Spider-Man was a type of Christ. He went through suffering just to do good. And he continued to do it even in the face of everyone misunderstanding him and hating him."

Spider-Man, Icon Art and Invisible Realities

Dukes is an artist of Orthodox icons for churches, which is art that doesn't at times have the same perspective or photo-realistic graphics, like Ditko's early drawings of Spider-Man.

Blake Bell, creator of Ditko.Comics Web site, said:

"Visually, Ditko had what most people would consider a cartoony style, but his work was far more real than the "photo-realist" comic artists that would appear on the scene in the following 20 years.

"His was more real because the visual laws defined in his universe were so real, so consistent, that one suspends disbelief to its maximum."

Icon historian Andrei Navrozov, in the June issue of Chronicles, agrees with Bell that art can either be about "gaining a deeper understanding" of reality by symbols or can "mimic" reality.

Perspective was first invented in 470 B.C. by Agatharchus as a means of "geometric illusionism" to mimic reality in stage sets for theater, according to the icon historian.

Navrozov said the "theater set is conceived as a fiction, whereas a [icon] painting is born as an attempt at truth of life, an attempt that in no sense compromises the integrity of the original [reality]. ... They are symbols of real life, not lifelike imitations of reality.

"There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. 'Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses under communism?"

Navrozov shows us that the modern battleground against God and reality is imagery and the imagination. Michael O' Brien in "A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind" said that the imagination is the way that mankind comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."

The modern imagination, according to O'Brien, has lost "God's territory" by returning to its "pre-pagan split in consciousness," which is the Gnostic rejection of the "sacramental" unity of spirit and matter, the addiction to occult tales of will to power like Harry Potter, and the relativistic denial of good and evil with ends-justify-the means storylines.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is for O'Brien a prime example of a return to the Western Christian epic tradition of the moral imagination, which comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."

O'Brien said, "The discernment of the right paths that must be taken, if good is to triumph, is dramatized in the myriad geographical, emotional, spiritual, and symbolic choices faced by the questers. In each of these, Tolkein's world is faithful to the moral order of the universe, to the absolute necessity of freedom. Middle-earth is a "sacramental" world, an "incarnational" world. ... Spirit [invisible realities] and matter are never portrayed as adversaries."

Western Culture Based on Reality and God

The Western Christian culture was rooted in this service to reality and God. Reality was the belief in the objectivity of things that are both material and spiritual. During the last two to five centuries, materialistic modernity has been the adversary of this spiritual and matter "incarnational" worldview.

This "incarnational" reality was rooted out and refilled with the lone materialistic science and "realism" in art worldview – in which reality was contained only within material objects that could be tested or seen.

Spiritual (invisible) realities like God, love, beauty, responsibility and free will were neither seeable, material nor testable, so they were not within modernity's realism.

Modernity attacked the primacy of realistic philosophies such as Thomism and realistic symbolic literature like Dante's spiritual epics and Shakespeare's dramas contrasting persons who were symbols of the conflicting real worldviews of modernity and the older realistic philosophy.

Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" illustrates what the two cultures were in conflict about. In our time, Clinton ("What is the definition of is?") is the symbol of modernity's denial of "to be" or objective truth or falsehood.

Modernity, in its desire to stamp out the Christian culture, dislodged Thomism realistic philosophy and realistic symbolic literatures with Pavlovian behaviorism as well as the materialistic reductive studies and application of art, which represented only material acts. Such as Freud's deterministic reduction of all symbols of the mind to represent only the physical acts of sex and Picasso's sexual anti-art.

This cramped reality of only the materially seeable or testable led to rootlessness and alienation, which was so unbearable to modern man that there was a reaction. According to philosopher Allan Bloom, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of disbelief in all reality, seeable or unseeable – material or spiritual – became the language of the American reaction.

Friedrich Nietzsche's values philosophy led to the subjectivity of all concepts of objective truth, which included good and evil.

Many will remember when President Reagan called the USSR "the evil empire"; he was roundly criticized for violating the new language of "beyond good and evil." This language of value relativism allows for neither the words nor the symbols of evil and good.

Nietzsche's anti-reality philosophy of "God is dead" led to the anti-heroes of politics and art.

In society this led to the denial of the concepts of absolute truth and the law of identity in reality by modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso and by politicians such as Clinton. This rejection of good and evil in turn led to the degrading of women and sexuality.

In the case of Picasso, E. Michael Jones in "Degenerate Moderns" says:

"His break with the traditions was an index of his hatred not only toward the spiritual values of the West but toward the human body and spirit that the West prized as good. In the end, the only thing that Picasso portrayed realistically was the woman's crotch. Modern art had returned to its roots, and the gaping crotch was the only thing now that could keep the aging Picasso in touch with the real world."

Spider-Man the Hero

On the other hand, the hit Spider-Man movie may be a sign that our society wants to go back to the culture that Nietzsche, Picasso and Clinton rejected – a culture that was able to see the objective reality of God, love, beauty, responsibility, free will and the honorable hero.

In the climax of the movie, at the top of a bridge, the Green Goblin's hand holds up the woman that Spider-Man loves and in the other hand he holds a cable with a tram full of children dangling at the other end.

Then the villain lets them fall to their deaths. As he does this, he gives Spider-Man a choice by saying, "You can save either the girl or the children."

Spider-Man, almost miraculously, saves both. For some, this is symbolic of the need in our society to return to the Christian tradition of men retaking the heroic responsibility of showing love by committing both to his woman and the fruit of their love through "better or worse" for life.

As our hero slowly lowers, by the cable, his love and the children to safety, he is repeatedly knocked around by the Green Goblin.

The Goblin taunts him to let go and save himself, which would mean the deaths of those he is lowering. But as the villain zeros in for the kill, Spider-Man is ready to give his life for others, as another hero did 2,000 years ago.

With the help of New Yorkers, Spider-Man saves his love and the children and defeats the Goblin, who finally begs for mercy. As our hero is about to give him his hand, the villain sends his high-tech vehicle to kill Spider-Man from behind. Spidey avoids the vehicle and it ends up killing the Goblin.

This is the Christian message in a symbolic nutshell.

God will forgive anyone no matter what the offense, with only one exception. The only offense God can't forgive without destroying our free will is one's choice to reject mercy. By the Judas choice, one freely sends oneself to where God is not, which is the definition of hell.

Pornography and Clinton the Anti-hero

The Democrats and their public relations agency, the media, are at the other end of the symbolic spectrum, as real-life anti-heroes who use the seduction marketing trick of association to sell lies.

Years ago, in Catholic books, association meant personal relationships with good or bad companions – friendships that led to depravity or honorable lives.

Association now means creating the false impression that a product, place, thing or politician is like the symbol he figuratively stands next to. Nike shoes are "good" because stars like Michael Jordan wear them, or toothpaste will make you popular because that's what happens in the commercial.

It's a con job to sell products and politicians. Sadly, the shadier part of our economic culture is based on this tactic. This shallow magician's trick, as with all lies, leads to meaninglessness and despair.

The selling of pornography to the masses by associating it with constitutional freedoms would make our founding fathers turn over in their graves.

Porn is not only bad, it is also an empty evil that can only mimic reality. It's men having imaginary relationships with glossed-over images of what was once a picture of a real woman, betraying her most intimate self and future relationships. The emptiness keeps multiplying.

Porn is not symbolic of real life, but a lifelike imitation of reality.

As Navrozov said, "There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. 'Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses."

The marketing and selling of porn brings us to Bill Clinton, who, despite promises to the contrary, disrupted the "obscenity prosecution" of Ronald Reagan's task force, which had the porn industry in "serious trouble in the late '80s and early '90s."

Culture War editor E. Michael Jones said, " This [Reagan] task force caused a major rollback of the porn industry during the late '80s and early '90s. ... Florida, according to Sears, was on its way to becoming a porn-free state – except for one county, whose District Attorney inexplicably refused to prosecute cases. That county was Dade county and the name of the DA was Janet Reno and she became the Attorney General when William Jefferson Clinton took office in 1992. That event signaled the end of the federal task force to prosecute pornography."

Clinton lived the message. He was the presidential X-rated soap opera star for the $10 billion annual pornography industry.

Our society was willing to accept Clinton as an anti-hero. And as Ditko said, "[A]n anti-hero corrupts the moral good."

His presidential movie star appeal and the porn industry's money helped his party by association to sell porn, homosexuality, abortion and masturbation all the way down to the elementary schools.

Mr. Clinton, There Is an Is

A few years ago, I spoke with a Texan director of a crisis pregnancy center who has saved thousands of unborn babies. We spoke of a pro-life group whose top priority – to put it mildly – was not saving as many babies as possible. He said to stay away from them because they are "spiritual masturbators."

I love new word combinations, so I researched it to see where it would take me. I found masturbation to be a good metaphor for the spiritual direction our society is taking.

"The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity," Norman Mailer said. If one has, for example, the image of a beautiful sexy babe in masturbation, one still doesn't know whether one can make love to her in the flesh. All you know is that you can violate her in the brain. ... But, if one has fought the good or evil fight and ended with the beautiful sexy dame ... one has something real to build on."

Masturbation – as the pornography industry knows – is a profitable lie. For example, if someone says he had sex with a porn star and he didn't, it is a lie. If one imagines having sex with a porn star, it is still an untruth. The imagination is used to reach unreality.

In contrast to this abuse, the imagination can be used to reach into deep reality. As philosopher Edith Stein showed, truth can be found using the phenomenon of the imagination. As Thomas Aquinas also demonstrated, the mind can grasp the realities of love, truth and God using the phenomena of the imagination and reason. One only need read Shakespeare or G.K. Chesterton to see the imagination grasping deep truths.

Chesterton, in a book on Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, shows how the reason and imagination can work together to reveal the philosophical reality of being:

"A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye.

"This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope. ... [T]he child is aware of Ens [being]. Long before he knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically [with a blow on the table], There is an Is ... a thing cannot be and not be. Henceforth, in common or popular language, there is false and true."

The masturbator who imagines he is with the porn star is not in is – or, in common language, he is in falsehood. His body and imagination are moving – as moderns would say, progressing – but the direction of his mind is toward unreality. The porn addict and people like Clinton must always ask for the definition of 'is' because they are living in a lie.

Once one denies absolute truth and the law of identity, he will live in a lie. Ditko said, "Aristotle formulated the law of identity. A is A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. It cannot contradict itself and be a lie."

Our society has this choice.

It can either go the Clintonian direction toward the unreality of the pornography industry, which does not want an is because then it would have to be morally responsible.

Or it can go in the direction of the reality that Ditko points to, where there is an is, as well as the reality of God, love, beauty, free will, responsibility and the honorable hero.

End the Fed, Save the USA: Ron Paul

2009-11-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32881898/

End the Fed, Save the Dollar: Ron Paul

By: Brian Beers

"Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve," writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled "End the Fed."

"It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class."

Paul makes the case that the Fed is the main culprit responsible for the current economic mess the country faces through the destructive policies of cheap credit and excessive money printing.

"Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit," says Paul. "If that were so, no one would have to work for a living. Inflated prices only deceive one into believing that real wealth has been created."

The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, has been acting as the main central bank of the United States for nearly one hundred years. Many Americans are either not sure or not interested in what role the Fed plays in managing the economy. "The economic crisis has changed everything," writes Congressman Paul.

Paul is currently pushing for passage of a bill, H.R. 1207, that would allow for an unprecedented audit of the Federal Reserve. The bill has 289 co-sponsors, and is gaining solid momentum in the House of Representatives.

"The worse the economy gets, the more power Congress is willing to grant to the Federal Reserve. Trillions of dollars created and distributed by the Fed with no requirement to submit to any oversight" argues Congressman Paul.

"End the Fed" is a sharp counter to Keynesian economic theory, and takes aim at the hazards of a managed economy.

Paul, a strong advocate of free-markets and the Austrian school of economics counters those looking to blame the near collapse of the financial system on capitalism by penning, "Manipulating the money supply and interest rates rejects all the principles of the free market, and so it cannot be said that too free a market caused this mess. The market was not free at all. It was manipulated and distorted."

But, wait.

Didn't Fed Chairman Bernanke hint that the recession may already be over?

Wouldn't that indicate that the "emergency interventions" of the past year or so worked to stabilize the economy, and all is on its way back to normal?

Paul writes, "The Fed is using all its power to drive the monetary base to unprecedented heights, creating trillions in new money out of thin air. From April 2008 to April 2009, the adjusted monetary base shot up from $856 billion to an unbelievable $1.749 trillion. Was there any new wealth created? New production? No, this was the Ben Bernanke printing press at work. If you and I did anything similar, we would be called counterfeiters and be sent away for a lifetime in prison. But, when the Fed does it - complete with a scientific gloss - it is seen as the perfectly legal and responsible conduct of monetary policy."

On the inflation front, Paul adds "It's as if we still believe that money can be grown on trees, and we don't stop to realize that if it did grow on trees, it would take on the value of leaves in the fall, to be either mulched or bagged and put in a landfill. That is to say, it would be worthless."

You get the feeling after reading this book, that Paul sees his goal of cutting off the power of the Fed as attainable in the long run, but needed a "playbook" to help educate the general public as to why they should care, and what they should demand be done about it from their elected officials.

The passage from the book that stuck with me the most. "When we unplug the Fed, the dollar will stop its long depreciating trend, international currency values will stop fluctuating wildly, banking will no longer be a dice game, and financial power will cease to gravitate toward a small circle of government-connected insiders."

Protest Semi-porn Blasphemy Images of Our Lady of Fatima and Saints

2009-10-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

America Needs Fatima

Send your instant e-protest to the Minister of Justice of Spain against a calendar that shows the Fatima apparitions in a perverted and homosexual sense.

October 26, 2009

My heart is sick to tell you, but...

...as Catholics, we must defend Our Lady's honor, especially when She is blasphemed, and shown half-naked!

According to press reports, homosexual groups in Spain published a calendar that has horrific, unspeakable blasphemies against Our Lady of Fatima and other Marian apparitions!

Besides a man that is practically naked alongside Our Lady, the calendar has "images that are based on famous works of sacred art, especially apparitions of the Virgin Mary, but interpreted by transsexuals.

"In the 'Secular Calendar,' each month is represented by a free interpretation of famous scenes of Catholic imagery, such as Our Lady of Fatima and the three shepherd children. But redecorated with homosexual esthetics."

"The scenes show saints dressed as drag queens, using crowns, necklaces, bracelets, and colored condoms with applicators and vibrators attached to the crowns."

Moreover, the homosexual group behind the calendar suggests December 25 be officially declared the Day of Democracy instead of Christmas. (BOL Noticias, online 10/19/09). http://noticias.bol.uol.com.br/internacional/2009/10/19/ult36u47296.jhtm
--- (Access with caution).

As Catholics, you and I cannot remain silent before such blasphemous insults to Our Lady and the Catholic faith! No matter where in the world it is.

So please send a protest message NOW via email to the Minister of Justice in Spain.

It's vital that you send your message right away. I don't believe the honor of Our Lady has ever been attacked like this before in history. Ever!

You and I, and tens of thousands of Americans MUST speak out against this and spread our just outrage to other countries too. And, with God's help, our prayers and protest may become so huge that the authorities in Spain will enforce the country's anti-blasphemy laws, and prohibit this blasphemous calendar.

How wonderful that would be!

For love of Our Blessed Mother, please pray this happens.

So please send your e-message today to the Minister of Justice of Spain.

And consider forwarding this email message to all the Catholics you know.

And since the honor of Our Lady was insulted in the worst way ever, you and I MUST offer the most fervent and widespread act of reparation possible at this time.

To join our nationwide, even worldwide campaign of reparation, please go here to download and pray these acts of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Thank you for joining me in this fervent, filial and global act of reparation in face of such a vile, unspeakable blasphemy against our dearest and purest Mother.

May God bless you!

Sincerely in Jesu et Maria

Robert E. Ritchie
America Needs Fatima
www.ANF.org

PS --- Please send your instant e-mail protest against this blasphemy to the Minister of Justice of Spain at https://www.americaneedsfatima.net/campaigns/E0075/protest-terrible-blasphemy-to-our-lady-of-fatima.html

Above all, please pray that our protest be blessed by God, and that hundreds of thousands of Americans join Catholics worldwide in defending the holy honor of Our Lady against this vile calendar.

Spider-Man vs. Porn

By Fred Martinez

Steve Ditko, the original artist and co-creator of the Spider-Man comic, which is now a record-breaking hit movie, is the Greta Garbo of comic books.

Refusing to give interviews for 20 years, he recently refused interviews for major articles about him by the Los Angeles Times and one of Canada's leading newspapers, the National Post.

Ditko, however, explained his philosophy of art in a narrative on a 1987 video titled "The Masters of Comic Book Art," hosted by author Harlan Ellison. In his introduction, Ellison dismissed Ditko's plea that heroes in art and literature be measured by the moral courage shown in objective good vs. evil choices.

The artist now seems prophetic for saying in the show that if we glorify the anti-hero in art, then anti-life and violence will come into our culture. The anti-heroes of the Columbine-like killings in public schools and the Sept. 11 terrorists seem to justify his claim.

What our American and global culture needs are heroes as models. In the program, the artist and co-creator of Spider-Man says, "Aristotle said that art is more important than history. History tells how man did act. Art shows how man should and could act. It creates a model.

"The self-flawed and anti-hero provide the heroic label without the need to act better. A crooked cop, a flawed cop, is not a valid model of a good law enforcer," Ditko said in the program. "An anti-cop corrupts the legal good, and an anti-hero corrupts the moral good."

Spider-Man as a Model for Good

The power of Ditko's art has in fact influenced youth toward good. In the fall 2001 issue of the Jesuit, a teenager named Pedro tells how he was inspired to go to college by Spider-Man's message.

"Spider-Man got his power when he was a teenager and wasn't sure how to use it," Pedro explains. "So his grandfather [actually uncle] told him, 'With greater power comes greater responsibility.' That's the way it is at Cristo Rey. We're learning to make the world a better place. We're going to go to college and give a whole lot back from what we've been given."

Some are saying that Spider-Man is even a type of Christ. In his essay for the video, Ditko seems at times to be describing Spider-Man as well as Christ. He said, "Early comic book heroes were not about life as it is, but creation of how a man with a clear understanding of right and wrong and the moral courage to choose acts even if branded an outlaw."

On the Internet, I found the testimony of a man who used Ditko's art to turn to God. Mark Dukes, now a deacon of the African Orthodox Church, said:

"My father wasn't around. My mother was a single parent. It was a vacuum in my life. Who am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to be?

"For me, Spider-Man really resonated. Spider-Man's alter ego was Peter Parker, who was a nerd. And I didn't feel like I was a cool guy either. Spider-Man was disliked and feared. Everyone thought he was a crook, but he was a good guy. No one gave him any respect but he continued to do good even in the face of all that.

"He would sacrifice himself, get beat up and then people would say 'Ahhh. Spider-Man! Run. He's going to do something to us!' And really he had just now saved the world. That is very saintly.

"For me, Spider-Man was a type of Christ. He went through suffering just to do good. And he continued to do it even in the face of everyone misunderstanding him and hating him."

Spider-Man, Icon Art and Invisible Realities

Dukes is an artist of Orthodox icons for churches, which is art that doesn't at times have the same perspective or photo-realistic graphics, like Ditko's early drawings of Spider-Man.

Blake Bell, creator of Ditko.Comics Web site, said:

"Visually, Ditko had what most people would consider a cartoony style, but his work was far more real than the "photo-realist" comic artists that would appear on the scene in the following 20 years.

"His was more real because the visual laws defined in his universe were so real, so consistent, that one suspends disbelief to its maximum."

Icon historian Andrei Navrozov, in the June issue of Chronicles, agrees with Bell that art can either be about "gaining a deeper understanding" of reality by symbols or can "mimic" reality.

Perspective was first invented in 470 B.C. by Agatharchus as a means of "geometric illusionism" to mimic reality in stage sets for theater, according to the icon historian.

Navrozov said the "theater set is conceived as a fiction, whereas a [icon] painting is born as an attempt at truth of life, an attempt that in no sense compromises the integrity of the original [reality]. ... They are symbols of real life, not lifelike imitations of reality.

"There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. 'Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses under communism?"

Navrozov shows us that the modern battleground against God and reality is imagery and the imagination. Michael O' Brien in "A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind" said that the imagination is the way that mankind comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."

The modern imagination, according to O'Brien, has lost "God's territory" by returning to its "pre-pagan split in consciousness," which is the Gnostic rejection of the "sacramental" unity of spirit and matter, the addiction to occult tales of will to power like Harry Potter, and the relativistic denial of good and evil with ends-justify-the means storylines.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" is for O'Brien a prime example of a return to the Western Christian epic tradition of the moral imagination, which comprehends "God's territory" and his created "invisible realities."

O'Brien said, "The discernment of the right paths that must be taken, if good is to triumph, is dramatized in the myriad geographical, emotional, spiritual, and symbolic choices faced by the questers. In each of these, Tolkein's world is faithful to the moral order of the universe, to the absolute necessity of freedom. Middle-earth is a "sacramental" world, an "incarnational" world. ... Spirit [invisible realities] and matter are never portrayed as adversaries."

Western Culture Based on Reality and God

The Western Christian culture was rooted in this service to reality and God. Reality was the belief in the objectivity of things that are both material and spiritual. During the last two to five centuries, materialistic modernity has been the adversary of this spiritual and matter "incarnational" worldview.

This "incarnational" reality was rooted out and refilled with the lone materialistic science and "realism" in art worldview – in which reality was contained only within material objects that could be tested or seen.

Spiritual (invisible) realities like God, love, beauty, responsibility and free will were neither seeable, material nor testable, so they were not within modernity's realism.

Modernity attacked the primacy of realistic philosophies such as Thomism and realistic symbolic literature like Dante's spiritual epics and Shakespeare's dramas contrasting persons who were symbols of the conflicting real worldviews of modernity and the older realistic philosophy.

Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" illustrates what the two cultures were in conflict about. In our time, Clinton ("What is the definition of is?") is the symbol of modernity's denial of "to be" or objective truth or falsehood.

Modernity, in its desire to stamp out the Christian culture, dislodged Thomism realistic philosophy and realistic symbolic literatures with Pavlovian behaviorism as well as the materialistic reductive studies and application of art, which represented only material acts. Such as Freud's deterministic reduction of all symbols of the mind to represent only the physical acts of sex and Picasso's sexual anti-art.

This cramped reality of only the materially seeable or testable led to rootlessness and alienation, which was so unbearable to modern man that there was a reaction. According to philosopher Allan Bloom, Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of disbelief in all reality, seeable or unseeable – material or spiritual – became the language of the American reaction.

Friedrich Nietzsche's values philosophy led to the subjectivity of all concepts of objective truth, which included good and evil.

Many will remember when President Reagan called the USSR "the evil empire"; he was roundly criticized for violating the new language of "beyond good and evil." This language of value relativism allows for neither the words nor the symbols of evil and good.

Nietzsche's anti-reality philosophy of "God is dead" led to the anti-heroes of politics and art.

In society this led to the denial of the concepts of absolute truth and the law of identity in reality by modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso and by politicians such as Clinton. This rejection of good and evil in turn led to the degrading of women and sexuality.

In the case of Picasso, E. Michael Jones in "Degenerate Moderns" says:

"His break with the traditions was an index of his hatred not only toward the spiritual values of the West but toward the human body and spirit that the West prized as good. In the end, the only thing that Picasso portrayed realistically was the woman's crotch. Modern art had returned to its roots, and the gaping crotch was the only thing now that could keep the aging Picasso in touch with the real world."

Spider-Man the Hero

On the other hand, the hit Spider-Man movie may be a sign that our society wants to go back to the culture that Nietzsche, Picasso and Clinton rejected – a culture that was able to see the objective reality of God, love, beauty, responsibility, free will and the honorable hero.

In the climax of the movie, at the top of a bridge, the Green Goblin's hand holds up the woman that Spider-Man loves and in the other hand he holds a cable with a tram full of children dangling at the other end.

Then the villain lets them fall to their deaths. As he does this, he gives Spider-Man a choice by saying, "You can save either the girl or the children."

Spider-Man, almost miraculously, saves both. For some, this is symbolic of the need in our society to return to the Christian tradition of men retaking the heroic responsibility of showing love by committing both to his woman and the fruit of their love through "better or worse" for life.

As our hero slowly lowers, by the cable, his love and the children to safety, he is repeatedly knocked around by the Green Goblin.

The Goblin taunts him to let go and save himself, which would mean the deaths of those he is lowering. But as the villain zeros in for the kill, Spider-Man is ready to give his life for others, as another hero did 2,000 years ago.

With the help of New Yorkers, Spider-Man saves his love and the children and defeats the Goblin, who finally begs for mercy. As our hero is about to give him his hand, the villain sends his high-tech vehicle to kill Spider-Man from behind. Spidey avoids the vehicle and it ends up killing the Goblin.

This is the Christian message in a symbolic nutshell.

God will forgive anyone no matter what the offense, with only one exception. The only offense God can't forgive without destroying our free will is one's choice to reject mercy. By the Judas choice, one freely sends oneself to where God is not, which is the definition of hell.

Pornography and Clinton the Anti-hero

The Democrats and their public relations agency, the media, are at the other end of the symbolic spectrum, as real-life anti-heroes who use the seduction marketing trick of association to sell lies.

Years ago, in Catholic books, association meant personal relationships with good or bad companions – friendships that led to depravity or honorable lives.

Association now means creating the false impression that a product, place, thing or politician is like the symbol he figuratively stands next to. Nike shoes are "good" because stars like Michael Jordan wear them, or toothpaste will make you popular because that's what happens in the commercial.

It's a con job to sell products and politicians. Sadly, the shadier part of our economic culture is based on this tactic. This shallow magician's trick, as with all lies, leads to meaninglessness and despair.

The selling of pornography to the masses by associating it with constitutional freedoms would make our founding fathers turn over in their graves.

Porn is not only bad, it is also an empty evil that can only mimic reality. It's men having imaginary relationships with glossed-over images of what was once a picture of a real woman, betraying her most intimate self and future relationships. The emptiness keeps multiplying.

Porn is not symbolic of real life, but a lifelike imitation of reality.

As Navrozov said, "There is no deeper conflict in history than that between these opposing views of art. 'Is art to serve reality and the individual under God or is it to serve [materialistic] realism and the masses."

The marketing and selling of porn brings us to Bill Clinton, who, despite promises to the contrary, disrupted the "obscenity prosecution" of Ronald Reagan's task force, which had the porn industry in "serious trouble in the late '80s and early '90s."

Culture War editor E. Michael Jones said, " This [Reagan] task force caused a major rollback of the porn industry during the late '80s and early '90s. ... Florida, according to Sears, was on its way to becoming a porn-free state – except for one county, whose District Attorney inexplicably refused to prosecute cases. That county was Dade county and the name of the DA was Janet Reno and she became the Attorney General when William Jefferson Clinton took office in 1992. That event signaled the end of the federal task force to prosecute pornography."

Clinton lived the message. He was the presidential X-rated soap opera star for the $10 billion annual pornography industry.

Our society was willing to accept Clinton as an anti-hero. And as Ditko said, "[A]n anti-hero corrupts the moral good."

His presidential movie star appeal and the porn industry's money helped his party by association to sell porn, homosexuality, abortion and masturbation all the way down to the elementary schools.

Mr. Clinton, There Is an Is

A few years ago, I spoke with a Texan director of a crisis pregnancy center who has saved thousands of unborn babies. We spoke of a pro-life group whose top priority – to put it mildly – was not saving as many babies as possible. He said to stay away from them because they are "spiritual masturbators."

I love new word combinations, so I researched it to see where it would take me. I found masturbation to be a good metaphor for the spiritual direction our society is taking.

"The ultimate direction of masturbation always has to be insanity," Norman Mailer said. If one has, for example, the image of a beautiful sexy babe in masturbation, one still doesn't know whether one can make love to her in the flesh. All you know is that you can violate her in the brain. ... But, if one has fought the good or evil fight and ended with the beautiful sexy dame ... one has something real to build on."

Masturbation – as the pornography industry knows – is a profitable lie. For example, if someone says he had sex with a porn star and he didn't, it is a lie. If one imagines having sex with a porn star, it is still an untruth. The imagination is used to reach unreality.

In contrast to this abuse, the imagination can be used to reach into deep reality. As philosopher Edith Stein showed, truth can be found using the phenomenon of the imagination. As Thomas Aquinas also demonstrated, the mind can grasp the realities of love, truth and God using the phenomena of the imagination and reason. One only need read Shakespeare or G.K. Chesterton to see the imagination grasping deep truths.

Chesterton, in a book on Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, shows how the reason and imagination can work together to reveal the philosophical reality of being:

"A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye.

"This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope. ... [T]he child is aware of Ens [being]. Long before he knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically [with a blow on the table], There is an Is ... a thing cannot be and not be. Henceforth, in common or popular language, there is false and true."

The masturbator who imagines he is with the porn star is not in is – or, in common language, he is in falsehood. His body and imagination are moving – as moderns would say, progressing – but the direction of his mind is toward unreality. The porn addict and people like Clinton must always ask for the definition of 'is' because they are living in a lie.

Once one denies absolute truth and the law of identity, he will live in a lie. Ditko said, "Aristotle formulated the law of identity. A is A. A thing is what it is. It has a specific nature and identity. It cannot contradict itself and be a lie."

Our society has this choice.

It can either go the Clintonian direction toward the unreality of the pornography industry, which does not want an is because then it would have to be morally responsible.

Or it can go in the direction of the reality that Ditko points to, where there is an is, as well as the reality of God, love, beauty, free will, responsibility and the honorable hero.

Why do the Leftists and Gay Culture’s Rejection of Objective Truth leads to Sexually Abusing Children?

Professor Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind, " said that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche's influence on public education – and he could have said 30 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth. Bloom said relativism "is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society."
The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche's will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement "relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution "corrupt" and demanded a "black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted."
The liberal "Catholics" speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche's will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.
According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist "clerical homosexual network" extends to "bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders."
The "real" Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.
Meanwhile, the Nietzschean "Catholics" are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ... [and] under no circumstances can they be approved."
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.
Norman Mailer, in his book "Prisoner of Sex," shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:
"So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. ... Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb ... no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator."
This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only "currency" left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.
Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.
Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.
Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.
Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with sex and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law. If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law? If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their "inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society," as Bloom said.
If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian power tactics of prison homosexuals. The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the "culture" of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.
The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don't accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn't accept the new "culture" and isn't a "team player."
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in "Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited":
"It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going 'to change the culture.'
"However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to 'convert' that the prisoner did. ... Consider, for example, what it means to impose a 'culture of teamwork' based on 'openness and mutual trust' in an individualistic society."
By using this process, the leftists with the media's marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a "mob mentality," which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the "elite" because they accept the "culture of teamwork" and have "openness" to the new definitions.
These persons wishing to be part of the "culture" or "team" are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:
"'Cognitive redefinition' involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition."
Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of modern America culture. He said, "Words such as 'charisma,' 'lifestyle,' 'commitment,' 'identity,' and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche ... are now practically American slang."
But the most important Nietzschean slang word is "values."
"Values" are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.
One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.
Nietzsche's philosophy is summed up by Bloom as
Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one's oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.
As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or "posits" one's values on a meaningless world.
Previous to Freud's psychoanalysis, Nietzsche's writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche "had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live."
Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was " profoundly influenced by Nietzsche," according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.
The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.
Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to 'become his real self.' Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.
Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously "unscientific" model of the "symbolic language of the unconscious."
Freud's pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung's unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the "active imagination" to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.
He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.
Many Christians thought this "language of the soul" was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn't understand was that Jung's theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.
Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.
Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung "not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung's active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called 'gods' (archetypes),' and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly."
Within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought, a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist is moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner "beings" that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan "gods."
As C.S. Lewis predicted in "The Screwtape Letters," we are moving to a "scientific" paganism. C.S. Lewis' name for the "scientific" pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner "beings" was the "Forces."
In "The Screwtape Letters," his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" – then the end of the war will be in sight.
Some of the largest audiences for this "scientific" paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.
Many Christians are using Jung's active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous "because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner 'beings' accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones."
If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner "beings," uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner "being" is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.
In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner "being" (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.
Jung's autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing 'voices.' In his autobiography he said his home was "... crammed full of spirits ... they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe."
During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, "The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." Keep that word "potential" in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.
Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, "Master morality," which was different from Christian morality – or "slave morality," as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.
In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, "Zarathustra," he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.
After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with "Individual psychology," which maintains that the individual strives for what he called "superiority" but now is called "self-realization" or "self-actualization," and which came from Nietzsche's ideas of striving and self-creation.
The "human potential movement" and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of "potential" teach the superior man.
Edvard Munch said:
Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche's philosophical idea of "will to power" into the psychological concept of self-actualization. Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers's Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. ... Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche's idea of "will to power" and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.
Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of "scientific" psychology. Kearns said:
The methods are based on "the group therapy technique" first developed in America in the 1970's by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group "facilitator". The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator's approach is "value free". There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an "outsider" and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such "judgemental intolerance".

If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in "teaching religious and moral education," then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of "scientific" paganism replacing Christianity.
Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose "approach" was "value free" – that is, there was "no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question."
In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, "THE WEDGE! You can't do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. ... Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group."
Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, "bases his 'Wedge Model' on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble." Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, "Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes."
Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers,
Maslow was always a revolutionary. ... In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, "In Eupsychian Management: A Journal," [Maslow said]: "I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker ... as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch."
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don't believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.
It is understandable that atheists such as Maslow , Adler and Gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since all have the basic assumption is that there is no right or wrong. ,
But that Christians and priests hold these assumptions is a disgrace. The denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the headlines of the Boston catastrophe and other dioceses

Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Sponsored Child Pornography and belongs to a Anti-Catholic Homosexual Terrorist Organization

2009-10-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113672

-"The chief of President Obama's Education Department Office of Safe Schools, homosexual activist Kevin Jennings, is being credited for helping sponsor a Harvard University display honoring the work of the radical homosexual organization Act Up."

-"'The exhibit includes horrible anti-Catholic bigotry, child pornography, and various descriptions and depictions of sexual perversion. It also includes posters accusing various public officials of murder during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and a call to terrorize offices of the National Institute of Health,' wrote Mass Resistance in its report on the event."

From: lg@catholicleague.org
To: lg@catholicleague.org
Sent: 10/22/2009 1:46:22 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: WHY DOES OBAMA LIKE KEVIN JENNINGS?

WHY DOES OBAMA LIKE KEVIN JENNINGS?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue speaks to the selection of Kevin Jennings as Director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools:

On September 23, I wrote a news release on the curious moral credentials of Kevin Jennings to be President Obama’s Safe Schools Czar: a former drug user and irresponsible teen counselor, he is also a Christian basher. What was not known at the time is that he is also a proud member of ACT UP, the homosexual urban terrorist group that broke into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989 and disrupted Mass; the Eucharist was desecrated and obscene depictions of Cardinal O’Connor were posted.

Now a group called MassResistance, and the website WorldNetDaily, have exposed Jennings as a member of ACT UP. And he is no mere member: Jennings is listed as a donor to a sick display, “ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993,” currently featured at the Harvard Art Museum. Harvard, of course, would never feature a display of Klan paraphernalia and say it was being done for the purpose of “dialogue.”

The real story here is not the corruption of Harvard—that’s old hat—the real story is the president of the United States choosing a morally challenged anti-Catholic homosexual to join his team. That Jennings belongs to, and sponsors, an urban terrorist organization, should alone disqualify him from public service at a municipal level. And remember, Obama did not choose him to monitor global cooling—he was chosen to instruct youth on moral matters.
Catholics deserve to know why Obama likes Jennings.

Susan A. Fani
Director of Communications
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
catalyst@catholicleague.org
New York, NY 10123
212-371-3191
212-371-3394 (fax)

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113672

Obama's safe-schools boss sponsors radical porn

Harvard event honoring AIDS activists credits Jennings for 'gifts and grants'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 21, 2009
8:10 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

The chief of President Obama's Education Department Office of Safe Schools, homosexual activist Kevin Jennings, is being credited for helping sponsor a Harvard University display honoring the work of the radical homosexual organization Act Up.

WND reported just days ago when Mass Resistance, a pro-family organization in Massachusetts that has battled over homosexual agenda points there, reported that Jennings was a part of that organization, known for its aggressive badgering of those who don't support the homosexual lifestyle.

A YouTube video revealed Jeff Davis, Jennings' "partner," addressing a banquet and saying of Jennings, "He was a member of Act Up. Act Up! So it's like – you know – here's a big gay activist. BIG gay activist!."

The video was pulled down shortly after the WND report appeared.

Find out how immoral, self-destructive behaviors have become enshrined as normal and even heroic in David Kupelian's culture-war classic, "The Marketing of Evil."

Now the advertising for the Harvard exhibition: "Act Up New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993," credits Kevin Jennings with others including Fred P. Hockberg and Tom Healy, Open Gate and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation for "gifts and grants" used for the project.

The display included dozens of "politically-charged posters, stickers, and other visual media that emerged during a pivotal moment of AIDS activism in New York City," according to a website promoting the effort.

(Story continues below)

Among those organizations displaying their work was "Fierce Pussy," which featured a poster of a toddler labeled "Dyke."

"Pairing text and image with penetrating anger and searing wit, ACT UP's art collectives targeted specific individuals and institutions at the local and national level, advocated for safer sex and gay and lesbian rights, and galvanized broadband support for the AIDS activism movement," the promotion states.

That group also was being featured as four "central members" will participate in a 3-day activism and print media workshop, the announcement said.

"The exhibit includes horrible anti-Catholic bigotry, child pornography, and various descriptions and depictions of sexual perversion. It also includes posters accusing various public officials of murder during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and a call to terrorize offices of the National Institute of Health," wrote Mass Resistance in its report on the event.

A member of the Mass Resistance group attended the event, which runs into December, when it opened just days ago.

"It was extremely disturbing. This exhibit is a 'celebration' of anger, terrorism, religious bigotry, and sexual deviance. It's considered a serious mainstream event by the elite academic and homosexual communities. In many ways it's a window into what the homosexual movement - including many who teach in colleges and high schools across the country - thinks of children, America, religion, society, and you," the report said.

"For any public official to be involved with this and funding it (much less a person in charge of directing the nation's children's 'safety') is beyond offensive. It's every parent's nightmare," the report said.

The website posted or linked several pages of reports on the event, but warned that they are "offensive and pornographic."

The group also reported that Jennings' book, "One Teacher in Ten," about homosexual teachers, was published by Alyson Books, which describes itself as "the world's oldest and largest publisher of LGBT literature."

Among the titles featured on the website are "Women of the Bite: Lesbian Vampire Erotica," "New Essential Guide to Gay and Lesbian Weddings," "Sordid Truths," and "Body Count."

The website confirmed one of its projects was "One Teacher in Ten."

According to the pro-family organization Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, Jennings already was "under fire for praising his hero, early homosexual activist Harry Hay, despite Hay's longtime, dedicated support of NAMBLA – the North American Man/Boy Love Association."

According to "The Marketing of Evil," by WND's David Kupelian, Act Up was extreme from its outset:

The defiant, storm-trooper tactics of in-your-face groups like ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) may or may not have been successful in pressuring the federal government to increase its commitment to combating AIDS. But such tactics definitely were successful in giving activist homosexuals a very bad name.

One infamous incident was the assault on New York's famed St. Patrick's Cathedral on December 10, 1989. While Cardinal John O'Connor presided over the 10:15 Sunday morning Mass, a multitude of "pro-choice" and "gay rights" activists protested angrily outside. Some, wearing gold-colored robes similar to clerical vestments, hoisted a large portrait of a pornographically altered frontal nude portrait of Jesus.

"You bigot, O'Connor, you're killing us!" screamed one protester, while signs called the archbishop "Murderer!"

Then it got really ugly. Scores of protesters entered the church, resulting in what many in the packed house of parishioners described as a "nightmare."

"The radical homosexuals turned a celebration of the Holy Eucharist into a screaming babble of sacrilege by standing in the pews, shouting and waving their fists, tossing condoms into the air," recounted the New York Post. One of the invaders grabbed a consecrated wafer and threw it to the ground.

Outside, demonstrators, many of them members of ACT-UP, carried placards that summed up their sentiments toward the Catholic Church: "Keep your church out of my crotch." "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries." "Eternal life to Cardinal John O'Connor NOW!" "Curb your dogma."

Clearly, the young movement was flirting with oblivion if it persisted in such ugly, indefensible tactics. It needed a new, more civilized direction if it ever hoped to convince Americans that homosexuality was a perfectly normal alternative lifestyle.
According to Mass Resistance research assembled by Amy Contrada, the Act Up organization also:

Staged a "die in" at Massachusetts General Hospital to protest the unavailability of PCP drug AP.

Protested Astra Pharmaceutical Products’'refusal to release the experimental antiviral drug Foscarnet.

Disrupted opening night at the San Francisco Opera.

Protested design of clinical trials planned by Harvard School of Medicine.

Jammed phone lines of health insurance database company protesting their use of "sexual deviation" classification.

Halted Boston's trolley service and traffic in front of Harvard School of Public Health to press the federal government into approving two new AIDS drugs.

Act Up also has covered Sen. Jesse Helms' house with a 'giant condom" and threw ashes of dead AIDS patients on the White House law, the report said.

Members of Congress have written to Obama demanding he dismiss Jennings following WND disclosures about his past, including an incident in which he counseled a 15-year-old student to keep quiet about being seduced by an older man.

Jennings says now he should have handled the situation while he was a teacher involving the sexually active student "differently," but the statement from Jennings failed to express "regret."

Jennings also wrote the foreword for a book called "Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling."

Another incident in his organization's past is the "fistgate" scandal in which his organization led discussions at a seminar where "young teens were guided on how to perform dangerous homosexual perversions including 'fisting."

Yet another issue arose over Jennings' address in a New York City church on March 20, 2000. He said:

"Twenty percent of people are hard-core fair-minded [pro-homosexual] people. Twenty percent are hard-core [anti-homosexual] bigots. We need to ignore the hard-core bigots, get more of the hard-core fair-minded people to speak up, and we'll pull that 60 percent [of people in the middle] over to our side. That's really what I think our strategy has to be. We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. We also have to quit – I'm trying to find a way to say this. I'm trying not to say, '[F—] 'em!' which is what I want to say, because I don't care what they think! [audience laughter] Drop dead!"

Messages WND has left with Jennings' office never have been returned.

Obama is an Atheist Clothed in Humanist Philosophy

2009-10-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Roeser

Obama's Creed

When asked why I am outspokenly anti-Obama, here is a main reason. Last April 9 at a news conference in Turkey, he said that while there is a great number of Christians in the United States...

"... we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

You can check the quote for accuracy on the Internet. It's verifiable. Well, as reader Joan Solms (and conservative activist) says: who are "we"? And what "ideals and a set of values"? What are they?

Here is the closest affirmation I can find of what this 3rd World-indoctrinated mystery man of murky genealogical background really "believes" if in fact belief is the right word. He is really not very smart. He poses often with his forefinger dug into his cheek with a faraway look in his eyes from which we are to deduce he's an intellectual. He's decidedly not (take it from me who was the first to interview him on radio after he became a state senator).

Some say he's a Deist like Thomas Jefferson but the above statement contradicts that. Jefferson who first postulated (in a private letter) the concept of "wall of separation" between church and state first suggested that members of Congress go to church in the Capitol itself. That's not Obama. His statement above is humanist and intrinsically atheist. His 20-year membership in Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ was no test. How can one sit there for 20 years hearing Wright rave against whitey and believe that's Christianity? Obama did it because he was a young man on the make and he decided the folks there could be put to good use as volunteers for him. Period. If he ever believed anything Wright said he should not have tossed him aside when the heat came on... because Wright was a detriment.

No, essentially Obama is an atheist clothed in humanist philosophy. His declaration above certifies it.

Religious historians commonly trace the origins of modern atheism to the 18th century "Enlightenment" [sic] or humanism, spawned by the fight by materialist philosophers and the encyclopedists (among whom was one Francois-Marie Arouet who signed himself "Voltaire") who sought to collect the sum-total of human knowledge within two covers. The original motivation was correct-to change the Old Order of ancient states which sanctioned their rule of "Divine Right." But it soon changed as the masses were told in books and pamphlets that the Christian religion contradicts "the political health and well-being of nations." Thereupon the encyclopedists invented their own god-the state... to which Obama obviously subscribes as substitute for God. People of Voltaire's time believed Christianity is "the art of making men drunk with ecstasy in order to divert their attention from the evils heaped upon them by those who govern them."

It's notable that since he's been president, Obama has never found a church or belief to which he is sustained. Jeremiah Wright was a useful tool and nothing else... no church, no minister... can supplant. So Obama lives a life as president identical with his life before being president: rootlessness but at bottom his religion is the state. It translates practically into humanism-atheism... which comes down to a variant of Marxism.

Marxism which started in the 19th century is essentially humanist, affirming the towering domination of man. Marx like Obama believed in essential economic rationale meaning that the production of goods and services form the real basis of society. Economics is totally under man's control and he need not look to any god beyond his own collective genius to achieve happiness. Among intellectuals there are two ways of looking at the purpose of human life. One is to begin with the world and allow one's intellect to soar after that to God. That is what's called philosophy. The other is to begin with God and allow one's intellect to explore the world. That's what's known as theology. Obama follows neither route. That's why he has tried to redefine what we believe as "ideals and a set of values."

It boils down to the state. Obama is a pragmatic materialist, an atheist-humanist who has placed the totality of his belief in man and the state as created by man. That's what I believe he is. Tell me if you agree or disagree by writing me at thomasfroeser@sbcglobal.net

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Is Obama's Nobel Peace Prize for "Carrying on" Two Wars and "launching" a Third in Pakistan?

2009-10-12T08:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.truthout.org/101009A

Nobel Prize for Promises?
Saturday 10 October 2009

by: Howard Zinn, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel Peace Prizes. The Nobel Committee is famous for its superficial estimates and for its susceptibility to rhetoric and empty gestures, while ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

Yes, Wilson gets credit for the League of Nations - that ineffectual body which did nothing to prevent war. But he also bombarded the Mexican coast, sent troops to occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic and brought the US into the slaughterhouse of Europe in the first World War - surely, among stupid and deadly wars, at the top of the list.

Sure, Theodore Roosevelt brokered a peace between Japan and Russia. But he was a lover of war, who participated in the US conquest of Cuba, pretending to liberate it from Spain while fastening US chains around that tiny island. And as president he presided over the bloody war to subjugate the Filipinos, even congratulating a US general who had just massacred 600 helpless villagers in the Phillipines. The Committee did not give the Nobel Prize to Mark Twain, who denounced Roosevelt and criticized the war, nor to William James, leader of the anti-imperialist league.

Oh yes, the Committee saw fit to give a peace prize to Henry Kissinger, because he signed the final agreement ending the war in Vietnam, of which he had been one of the architects. Kissinger, who obsequiously went along with Nixon's expansion of the war with the bombing of peasant villages in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Kissinger, who matches the definition of a war criminal very accurately, was given a peace prize!

People should not be given a peace prize on the basis of promises they have made (as with Obama, an eloquent maker of promises) but on the basis of actual accomplishments towards ending war. Obama has continued deadly, inhuman military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Nobel Peace Committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history.

--------

Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright and social activist, and has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award and the Lannan Literary Award. He is perhaps best known for "A People's History of the United States."

Who Created the Current Economic Mess?

2009-10-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

-"Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve," writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled "End the Fed."

-"It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class."

-"The Fed is using all its power to drive the monetary base to unprecedented heights, creating trillions in new money out of thin air."

-"From April 2008 to April 2009, the adjusted monetary base shot up from $856 billion to an unbelievable $1.749 trillion."

-"Was there any new wealth created? New production? No, this was the Ben Bernanke printing press at work. If you and I did anything similar, we would be called counterfeiters and be sent away for a lifetime in prison."

-"But, when the Fed does it, complete with a scientific gloss, it is seen as the perfectly legal and responsible conduct of monetary policy."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32881898/

End the Fed, Save the Dollar: Ron Paul

By:Brian Beers a Senior Producer here at CNBC.com

End The Fed by Ron Paul
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"Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve," writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled "End the Fed."

"It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class."

Paul makes the case that the Fed is the main culprit responsible for the current economic mess the country faces through the destructive policies of cheap credit and excessive money printing.

"Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit," says Paul. "If that were so, no one would have to work for a living. Inflated prices only deceive one into believing that real wealth has been created."

The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, has been acting as the main central bank of the United States for nearly one hundred years. Many Americans are either not sure or not interested in what role the Fed plays in managing the economy. "The economic crisis has changed everything," writes Congressman Paul.

Paul is currently pushing for passage of a bill, H.R. 1207, that would allow for an unprecedented audit of the Federal Reserve. The bill has 289 co-sponsors, and is gaining solid momentum in the House of Representatives.

Ron Paul
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"The worse the economy gets, the more power Congress is willing to grant to the Federal Reserve. Trillions of dollars created and distributed by the Fed with no requirement to submit to any oversight" argues Congressman Paul.

"End the Fed" is a sharp counter to Keynesian economic theory, and takes aim at the hazards of a managed economy.

Paul, a strong advocate of free-markets and the Austrian school of economics counters those looking to blame the near collapse of the financial system on capitalism by penning, "Manipulating the money supply and interest rates rejects all the principles of the free market, and so it cannot be said that too free a market caused this mess. The market was not free at all. It was manipulated and distorted."

Dennis Cook / AP
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But, wait.

Didn't Fed Chairman Bernanke hint that the recession may already be over?

Wouldn't that indicate that the "emergency interventions" of the past year or so worked to stabilize the economy, and all is on its way back to normal?

Paul writes, "The Fed is using all its power to drive the monetary base to unprecedented heights, creating trillions in new money out of thin air. From April 2008 to April 2009, the adjusted monetary base shot up from $856 billion to an unbelievable $1.749 trillion. Was there any new wealth created? New production? No, this was the Ben Bernanke printing press at work. If you and I did anything similar, we would be called counterfeiters and be sent away for a lifetime in prison. But, when the Fed does it - complete with a scientific gloss - it is seen as the perfectly legal and responsible conduct of monetary policy."

On the inflation front, Paul adds "It's as if we still believe that money can be grown on trees, and we don't stop to realize that if it did grow on trees, it would take on the value of leaves in the fall, to be either mulched or bagged and put in a landfill. That is to say, it would be worthless."

You get the feeling after reading this book, that Paul sees his goal of cutting off the power of the Fed as attainable in the long run, but needed a "playbook" to help educate the general public as to why they should care, and what they should demand be done about it from their elected officials.

The passage from the book that stuck with me the most. "When we unplug the Fed, the dollar will stop its long depreciating trend, international currency values will stop fluctuating wildly, banking will no longer be a dice game, and financial power will cease to gravitate toward a small circle of government-connected insiders."

Eliminating Left and Right: Personal Ownership & Moral Decisions Vs. Impersonal Materialist Forces

2009-10-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=346

-"One of the most important contributions of Catholic social teaching to economic thought is the Church’s insistence that the economy is not the result of implacable laws or impersonal forces, but of specific moral decisions.

-"The capitalist notion that the purpose of economic activity is profit, and that the greatest good for the greatest number follows automatically from this principle, is in the first place morally false and in the second profoundly arbitrary."

-"The socialist notion that economic activity is not rooted in personal ownership, and that the state alone can bring about equity and peace in the social order is, in the first place false as to its understanding of human nature and in the second inevitably totalitarian."

-"Neither system is based on the full truth about man, and so neither is capable of fostering authentic development or, as the Church puts it, 'development of the whole man and of all men.'"

-"Both instinctively believe that the full range of possibilities is represented by these two concepts, that each of these economic concepts depends on immutable laws and impersonal forces, and that the viewpoint which opposes their own is defined either by selfishness (for the right) or by ideology (for the left)." http://www.newsmax.com/borchgrave/moore_capitalism_movie/2009/10/05/268520.html

http://www.newsmax.com/borchgrave/moore_capitalism_movie/2009/10/05/268520.html

Corporate Greed a Bigger Problem Than Michael Moore

Monday, October 5, 2009 12:50 PM

By: Arnaud de Borchgrave Article Font Size

"The American dream fell apart at the seams," Willie Nelson strummed on CNN as he described the plight of small farmers going bust. Almost everything and everyone is fighting for survival in an economy that continues to defy wallops of government stimulus. Brick-and-mortar bookstore chains are also fighting for survival as the Kindle, evidently named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, with its 240,000 book titles, along with iPod Touch, iPhone, and Amazon.com, keep pushing intellectual and literary life into an electronic cocoon of $9.99 books. Tough economic times are good for book sales.

Google is making its vast online library of more than 1.5 million public domain books available for mobile phones like T-Mobile G1, powered by Google's Android Software. And the bricks-and-mortar bookstores, oozing red ink but still on top of a $24 billion book market, are launching the world's largest online bookstores. E-book sales soared to 29 million, or $9 billion in sales.

Amazon is still expected to generate $35 million profits on revenues of $420 million this year — and more than $700 million on $4 billion in revenues by 2014. Barnes & Noble is expanding its e-book service with an online store that is selling more than 200,000 e-book titles for laptop computers and mobile devices.

This new world is a bonanza for the prophets of doom and gloom that are beginning to read like a chronicle of our current predicament. Vice President Joe Biden sounds delusional when he says all's A-OK with Plan A and there is no need for Plan B. The Afghan War would seem to be ripe for Plan C. While "We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism" by John Derbyshire is a bit of a stretch, "Culture of Corruption" by Michelle Malkin and "Exploiting Chaos" by Jeremy Gutsche have the ring of authenticity.

"Catastrophe" by Dick Morris, a liberal-turned-conservative icon, gives all away on the cover:

"How Obama, Congress and the special interests are transforming . . . a slump into a crash, freedom into socialism, and a disaster into a catastrophe . . . and how to fight back."

Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore is back in action with another view of the same catastrophe. His latest pitchforks-and-torches movie against what he portrays as corporate fascism in "Capitalism: A Love Story," now packing theaters coast to coast and getting much favorable airtime for Moore on CNN's "Situation Room," ABC's "Nightline" and "GMA", Jay Leno, and the rest of the dominant media culture — and much hostility from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity — savages the post-Cold War capitalist order. No longer fearful of communism, the capitalism of the post-World War II era that Moore says he was in love with gave way to a rigged roulette wheel that enabled 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans to acquire 95 percent of the nation's wealth. A credit card system that encourages people to buy what they can't afford, Moore argues, coupled with predatory subprime mortgage lending, exposed the dark bankrupt side of capitalism.

Moore sees both communism and capitalism as practiced since the 1980s as systemic failures. When late-night comedians see Standard & Poor's as "your life in a nutshell"; a "financial planner" as "the guy whose phone has been disconnected"; and the "P/E ratio as the percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing," Moore is gaining on his right-wing detractors.

Moore's naive nostalgia for the '50s and '60s evokes Hopalong Cassidy, an era when the highest badge of honor was obedience to parents and the virtues of studying hard, with no ambiguity or confusion about heroism and what it stood for. Conservative pundits are spinning the movie as a call to socialism or communism. But that misses the point. These sound bites are more sound than bite. Ignored were an orgy of risky trading and the fraudulent deception of investors that unleashed a global financial meltdown.

The target is what we have allowed capitalism to become since the fall of communism. For those who are not astigmatically impaired, from Enron to Madoff, greed and corruption subverted democratic capitalism. No one said anything when one Wall Street giant put $16.7 billion aside for year-end bonuses in 2006 — for the best performers. One top trader turned down a $70 million bonus and resigned. He said he was insulted. He was worth more. He went out and formed his own hedge fund and made $300 million the first year. And not a peep from conservative talk show hosts, because this was free enterprise at work, not the harbinger of out-of-control greed.

Outlandish compensation packages; the ranks of billionaires from 350 before Sept. 11, 2001, to more than 1,000, propelled by hedge funds and derivatives (once described in congressional testimony as "global time bombs"); predatory, worthless subprime mortgages that were sliced and diced and sold good as gold the world over before they became "toxic assets"; the erosion of the middle classes into the ranks of the poor; six jobless for each available job. But the gravediggers of democratic capitalism aren't done yet.

The $26 trillion life insurance market is ripe for plucking, a la subprime mortgage sleight of hand. For the next big bubble, scam artists are buying, bundling, packaging, securitizing, and selling "stranger-owned" life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash. Instead of denouncing Moore's indictment of predatory capitalism, it would behoove right-wing talk show hosts to take the lead in exposing large-scale theft masquerading as solid business practice.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=346

Eliminating Left and Right: An Economic First Step

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In my last commentary on Caritas in Veritate (Splitting social and life issues? Can’t do it.), I promised to critique the “sure recipe for blindness” typically followed by the Western mind in reading Catholic social encyclicals. At the same time, I said I’d address the “large, long-standing and debilitating quarrel between left and right about the role of distributive justice”. The two problems are largely the same.

The Capitalist / Socialist West

When conservatives read social encyclicals, they often throw up their hands in disgust: “What does the Pope want us to do? Become socialists?” And when liberals read social encyclicals they tend to ignore everything that is said about ownership and subsidiarity. Both groups reflexively see socio-economic theory in terms of either or, either capitalist or socialist, either right or left. Both instinctively believe that the full range of possibilities is represented by these two concepts, that each of these economic concepts depends on immutable laws and impersonal forces, and that the viewpoint which opposes their own is defined either by selfishness (for the right) or by ideology (for the left).

For this reason, we read the social encyclicals with tunnel vision, and end up blind in the process. Most often we simply want to find out “whose side the Pope is on this time”, and to get ammunition for lobbing at the other side. Unfortunately, we fail to realize that both capitalism and socialism represent fundamentally materialist theories of how the economy ought to works. They are the result of an ongoing debate within a society which was already largely secularized when the debate began, and which has simply ignored large aspects of reality ever since. Neither side pays significant attention to the moral dimension of personal economic action.

One of the most important contributions of Catholic social teaching to economic thought is the Church’s insistence that the economy is not the result of implacable laws or impersonal forces, but of specific moral decisions. The capitalist notion that the purpose of economic activity is profit, and that the greatest good for the greatest number follows automatically from this principle, is in the first place morally false and in the second profoundly arbitrary. The socialist notion that economic activity is not rooted in personal ownership, and that the state alone can bring about equity and peace in the social order is, in the first place false as to its understanding of human nature and in the second inevitably totalitarian. Neither system is based on the full truth about man, and so neither is capable of fostering authentic development or, as the Church puts it, "development of the whole man and of all men."

Unfortunately, each side recognizes the falsehoods contained in the other, but neither recognizes the full range of reality. Because of this tunnel vision, the solution adopted in the West has been shaped by an incessant socio-political conflict in which one group creates wealth and another comes along later to redistribute it. Thus even limited social benefit are accompanied by the evils characteristic of both systems (i.e., irresponsible business and coercive bureaucracy), and all goes forward (when it goes at all) in an atmosphere of mistrust.

In effect, commutative justice—the law of exchange, in which the parties seldom have equal bargaining power—has become the province of the right, operating through business; and distributive justice—through which all are called to share in the goods of this world by virtue of their very humanity—has become the province of the left, operating through the State. I have, of course, over-simplified somewhat for clarity. In fact we are often our own worst enemies, taking one side when doing business and the other when doing politics. But most readers will recognize the split. This split is largely defined by the long-standing conflict between liberal and conservative over the role of distributive justice, to which I alluded in my introduction. For the conservative, distributive justice is very frequently ignored or denied. For the liberal, distributive justice is sought more or less exclusively through political power, at the expense of human freedom.

Transcending the Dialectic

In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI in effect condemns both sides. To the right, he says:

The market is subject to the principles of so-called commutative justice, which regulates the relations of giving and receiving between parties to a transaction. But the social doctrine of the Church has unceasingly highlighted the importance of distributive justice and social justice for the market economy, not only because it belongs within a broader social and political context, but also because of the wider network of relations within which it operates. In fact, if the market is governed solely by the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires in order to function well. Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function. (35)
Anyone who is even remotely aware of the causes of the current recession ought to recognize by now how much of our current economic failure has been occasioned by a fundamental lack of trust. In contrast, observing that God’s relationship with us is characterized by the “law of the gift”, in that everything that surrounds us and that we take for granted is in some deep sense a gift, Benedict argues that this spirit of “gratuitousness” must also characterize all human activity, including economic activity. This gratuitousness takes the form of a definite generosity and friendship in all relationships, which the Church’s social teaching calls “solidarity”.

But if the right often fails in solidarity, so too does the left. And so, to the left, Benedict says:

Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State. While in the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement, today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place…. The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society. (38-39)
Solidarity, says Pope Benedict, must be found within economic activity, not only “outside” it or “after” it. Solidarity is to be distinguished sharply from “giving in order to acquire” (the logic of exchange, the logic of the right) and “giving through duty” (the logic of public obligation imposed by the State, the logic of the left). To understand this dual indictment, it is necessary to observe that speaking of solidarity by government policy is the same as describing forcible theft on the part of one man as charity on the part of his victim. Whatever gains may be made, the State compounds the initial problem by reducing freedom and breeding distrust.

The Vision of Solidarity

By recognizing first and foremost that the economy is determined by moral decisions, the Church insists categorically that economic activity, including market activity, must be marked and impenetrated from the first by solidarity, the concern of “everyone for everyone”. This means that business management must be concerned in every enterprise with the good of all the stakeholders: workers, clients, suppliers, investors and what Benedict calls the “community of reference”, the community within which the economic activity takes place, which provides the resources upon which the economic activity depends, and which is affected in countless ways by that activity and its results.

“Both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift,” says Benedict, and indeed this is the only way to overcome the false economic dichotomy that dominates Western thought, to bridge the economic gap between conservatives and liberals, and even to help transcend the ultimate dialectic between left and right, in which economic attitudes play a major role, and which makes it so hard for Western man to think clearly about reality. This is so important that Benedict ultimately issues a challenge and a hope that we must all make our own:

The great challenge before us, accentuated by the problems of development in this global era and made even more urgent by the economic and financial crisis, is to demonstrate, in thinking and behavior, not only that traditional principles of social ethics like transparency, honesty and responsibility cannot be ignored or attenuated, but also that in commercial relationships the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity. This is a human demand at the present time, but it is also demanded by economic logic. It is a demand both of charity and of truth. (36)

Was the Financial Crisis a Fall or a Push?

2009-09-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/economic9-11.php
ECONOMIC 9-11:
DID LEHMAN BROTHERS FALL OR WAS IT PUSHED?
Ellen Brown, September 7th, 2009

A year after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, questions still swirl around its collapse. Lawrence MacDonald, whose book A Colossal Failure of Common Sense came out in July 2009, maintains that the bank was not in substantially worse shape than other major Wall Street banks. He says Lehman was just “put to sleep. They put the pillow over the face of Lehman Brothers and they put her to sleep.” The question is, why?

The Lehman bankruptcy is widely considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks considered “too big to fail.” The bankruptcy option was ruled out once and for all. The taxpayers would have to keep throwing money at the banks, no matter how corrupt, ill-managed or undeserving. As Dean Baker noted in April 2009:

“Geithner has supposedly ruled out the bankruptcy option because when he, along with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, tried letting Lehman Brothers go under last fall, it didn’t turn out very well. Of course, it is not necessary to go the route of an uncontrolled bankruptcy that Geithner and Co. pursued with Lehman. . . . [But] the Geithner crew insists that there are no alternatives to his plan; we have to just keep giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks . . . , further enriching the bankers who wrecked the economy.”

Although Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, September 15, 2008, it was actually “bombed” on September 11, when the biggest one-day drop in its stock and highest trading volume occurred before bankruptcy. Lehman CEO Richard Fuld maintained that the 158 year old bank was brought down by unsubstantiated rumors and illegal naked short selling. Although short selling (selling shares you don’t own) is legal, the short seller is required to have shares lined up to borrow and replace to cover the sale. Failure to buy the shares back in the next three trading days is called a “fail to deliver.” Christopher Cox, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008, said in a July 2009 article that naked short selling “can allow manipulators to force prices down far lower than would be possible in legitimate short-selling conditions.” By September 11, 2008, according to the SEC, as many as 32.8 million Lehman shares had been sold and not delivered – a 57-fold increase over the peak of the prior year. For a very large company like Lehman, with plenty of “float” (available shares for trading), this unprecedented number was highly suspicious and warranted serious investigation. But the SEC, which was criticized for failing to follow up even on tips that Bernie Madoff’s business was a ponzi scheme, has yet to announce the results of any investigation.

More Questions
Other questions about the Lehman collapse are raised in David Wessel’s July 2009 book In Fed We Trust. Why was Bear Stearns saved from bankruptcy but Lehman Brothers was not? How could the decision makers not realize the dire consequences of letting Lehman go down?

One possible explanation is that they actually thought the bank would be bought out at the last minute, just as Bear Stearns was. In both cases, the parties worked feverishly over the weekend after the stock’s collapse to try to negotiate a deal. For Bear Stearns, the negotiations succeeded, with the help of the New York Federal Reserve, which provided the loan used by JPMorgan Chase to complete the deal. With Lehman, however, the interested buyer was British, and the help that was needed was from the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. The weekend after the September 11 stock collapse, intense negotiations were pursued with Barclays Bank, which was prepared to underwrite Lehman’s debts; but it needed a waiver from British regulators of a rule requiring shareholder approval. Negotiations continued until the market was getting ready to open in Japan on Sunday, but UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling would not give the necessary waiver. He said something to the effect that he did not want to infect Britain with America’s cancer. The sentiment was understandable, but the question was, why did he wait until it was too late for the Treasury or the Federal Reserve to move in with other arrangements?

The issue takes on more significance in light of the fact that Chancellor Darling played a similar role in another 9-11 collapse the previous year. On September 11, 2007, frantic customers were lining up outside Northern Rock, the UK’s fifth largest mortgage lender, in the first British bank run in 141 years. The bank’s shares plunged 31% in a single day. Like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the U.S., the bankruptcy of Northern Rock changed the rules of the game. Britain’s major banks too would now be saved at any cost, in order to avoid the loss of customer confidence, panic and bank runs that could precipitate a 1929-style market crash.

With Northern Rock, as with Lehman Brothers, Alistair Darling could have saved the day but backed down. Northern Rock had a willing buyer, Lloyds TSB; but the buyer needed a loan from the Bank of England, which the Bank’s Governor, Mervyn King, had denied. Darling was advised by his staff to overrule the Governor and grant the loan, but this would have cost political capital for UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had been widely lauded for giving the Bank of England its independence in 1997.

Brown is criticized domestically for precipitating the financial crisis with errors made as Chancellor of the Exchequer before he became Prime Minister. Critics maintain the British Treasury has abdicated its responsibility as the financial overseer of the British economy to the Bank of England, which in many ways controls the government, because its advice is always followed regarding the British budget. The whole scenario suggests that the much-vaunted virtues of an independent central bank are overblown. Some economists, including Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke, blame poor policymaking by an independent Federal Reserve for bringing on the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Shock Therapy?
According to Representative Paul Kanjorski, speaking on C-SPAN in January 2009, the collapse of Lehman Brothers precipitated a $550 billion run on the money market funds on Thursday, September 18. This was the dire news that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presented to Congress behind closed doors, prompting Congressional approval of Paulson’s $700 billion bank bailout despite deep misgivings. It was the sort of “shock therapy” discussed by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, in which a major crisis prompts hasty emergency action involving the relinquishment of rights or funds that would otherwise be difficult to pry loose from the citizenry.

Like the “bombing” of Lehman stock on September 11, the $550 billion money market run was suspicious. The stock market had plunged when Lehman filed for bankruptcy on September 15, but it actually went up on September 16. Why did the money market wait until September 18 to collapse? A report by the Joint Economic Committee pointed to the fact that the $62 billion Reserve Primary Fund had “broken the buck” (fallen below a stable $1 per share) due to its Lehman investments; but that had occurred on September 15, and the fund had suspended redemptions for the following week. What dire reversal happened on September 17? According to the SEC, it was another record day for illegal naked short selling. Failed trades climbed to 49.7 million – 23% of Lehman trades.

The Larger Question Is Why?
All of this suggests that Lehman Brothers did not just fall over the brink but was pushed. Judge James Peck, who presided in the bankruptcy proceedings, said “Lehman Brothers became a victim, in effect the only true icon to fall in a tsunami that has befallen the credit markets.”

If Lehman was indeed sacrificed, who pushed it and to what end? Some critics point to Henry Paulson and his cronies at Goldman Sachs, Lehman’s arch rival. Goldman certainly came out on top after Lehman’s demise, but there are other possibilities as well, involving more global players. The month after Lehman collapsed, Gordon Brown and the EU leaders called for using the financial crisis as an opportunity to radically enhance the regulatory power of global institutions. Brown spoke of “a new global financial order,” echoing the “new world order” referred to by globalist banker David Rockefeller when he said in 1994:

“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the new world order.”

Richard Haas, President of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in 2006:

“Globalisation . . . implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.”

Sovereignty is one of these cherished rights that nations will give up only with “the right major crisis.” Gordon Brown put it like this:

“Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago, can no longer be postponed. . . . We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age.”

In April 2009, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling hosted the G20 summit in London, which focused on the financial crisis. A global currency issue was approved, and an international Financial Stability Board was agreed to as global regulator, to be based in the controversial Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. The international bankers who caused the financial crisis are indeed capitalizing on it, consolidating their power in “a new global financial order” that gives them top-down global control. Just some food for thought as September 11 rolls around again.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/dollar-deception.php

DOLLAR DECEPTION:
HOW BANKS SECRETLY CREATE MONEY
Ellen Brown, July 3rd, 2007
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/dollar-deception.php

Post your comments here

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It has been called "the most astounding piece of sleight of hand ever invented." The creation of money has been privatized, usurped from Congress by a private banking cartel. Most people think money is issued by fiat by the government, but that is not the case. Except for coins, which compose only about one one-thousandth of the total U.S. money supply, all of our money is now created by banks. Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) are issued by the Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation, and lent to the government.1 Moreover, Federal Reserve Notes and coins together compose less than 3 percent of the money supply. The other 97 percent is created by commercial banks as loans.2

Don't believe banks create the money they lend? Neither did the jury in a landmark Minnesota case, until they heard the evidence. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969) was a courtroom drama worthy of a movie script.3 Defendant Jerome Daly opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14,000 home mortgage loan on the ground that there was no consideration for the loan. "Consideration" ("the thing exchanged") is an essential element of a contract. Daly, an attorney representing himself, argued that the bank had put up no real money for his loan. The courtroom proceedings were recorded by Associate Justice Bill Drexler, whose chief role, he said, was to keep order in a highly charged courtroom where the attorneys were threatening a fist fight. Drexler hadn't given much credence to the theory of the defense, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand. To everyone's surprise, Morgan admitted that the bank routinely created money "out of thin air" for its loans, and that this was standard banking practice. "It sounds like fraud to me," intoned Presiding Justice Martin Mahoney amid nods from the jurors. In his court memorandum, Justice Mahoney stated:

Plaintiff admitted that it, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, . . . did create the entire $14,000.00 in money and credit upon its own books by bookkeeping entry. That this was the consideration used to support the Note dated May 8, 1964 and the Mortgage of the same date. The money and credit first came into existence when they created it. Mr. Morgan admitted that no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note.
The court rejected the bank's claim for foreclosure, and the defendant kept his house. To Daly, the implications were enormous. If bankers were indeed extending credit without consideration – without backing their loans with money they actually had in their vaults and were entitled to lend – a decision declaring their loans void could topple the power base of the world. He wrote in a local news article:

This decision, which is legally sound, has the effect of declaring all private mortgages on real and personal property, and all U.S. and State bonds held by the Federal Reserve, National and State banks to be null and void. This amounts to an emancipation of this Nation from personal, national and state debt purportedly owed to this banking system. Every American owes it to himself . . . to study this decision very carefully . . . for upon it hangs the question of freedom or slavery.
Needless to say, however, the decision failed to change prevailing practice, although it was never overruled. It was heard in a Justice of the Peace Court, an autonomous court system dating back to those frontier days when defendants had trouble traveling to big cities to respond to summonses. In that system (which has now been phased out), judges and courts were pretty much on their own. Justice Mahoney, who was not dependent on campaign financing or hamstrung by precedent, went so far as to threaten to prosecute and expose the bank. He died less than six months after the trial, in a mysterious accident that appeared to involve poisoning.4 Since that time, a number of defendants have attempted to avoid loan defaults using the defense Daly raised; but they have met with only limited success. As one judge said off the record:

If I let you do that – you and everyone else – it would bring the whole system down. . . . I cannot let you go behind the bar of the bank. . . . We are not going behind that curtain!5
From time to time, however, the curtain has been lifted long enough for us to see behind it. A number of reputable authorities have attested to what is going on, including Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s. He declared in an address at the University of Texas in 1927:

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. . . . Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.
Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in the Great Depression, wrote in 1934:

We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.6
Graham Towers, Governor of the Bank of Canada from 1935 to 1955, acknowledged:

Banks create money. That is what they are for. . . . The manufacturing process to make money consists of making an entry in a book. That is all. . . . Each and every time a Bank makes a loan . . . new Bank credit is created -- brand new money.7
Robert B. Anderson, Secretary of the Treasury under Eisenhower, said in an interview reported in the August 31, 1959 issue of U.S. News and World Report:

[W]hen a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.
How did this scheme originate, and how has it been concealed for so many years? To answer those questions, we need to go back to the seventeenth century.

The Shell Game of the Goldsmiths

In seventeenth century Europe, trade was conducted primarily in gold and silver coins. Coins were durable and had value in themselves, but they were hard to transport in bulk and could be stolen if not kept under lock and key. Many people therefore deposited their coins with the goldsmiths, who had the strongest safes in town. The goldsmiths issued convenient paper receipts that could be traded in place of the bulkier coins they represented. These receipts were also used when people who needed coins came to the goldsmiths for loans.

The mischief began when the goldsmiths noticed that only about 10 to 20 percent of their receipts came back to be redeemed in gold at any one time. They could safely "lend" the gold in their strongboxes at interest several times over, as long as they kept 10 to 20 percent of the value of their outstanding loans in gold to meet the demand. They thus created "paper money" (receipts for loans of gold) worth several times the gold they actually held. They typically issued notes and made loans in amounts that were four to five times their actual supply of gold. At an interest rate of 20 percent, the same gold lent five times over produced a 100 percent return every year, on gold the goldsmiths did not actually own and could not legally lend at all. If they were careful not to overextend this "credit," the goldsmiths could thus become quite wealthy without producing anything of value themselves. Since only the principal was lent into the money supply, more money was eventually owed back in principal and interest than the townspeople as a whole possessed. They had to continually take out loans of new paper money to cover the shortfall, causing the wealth of the town and eventually of the country to be siphoned into the vaults of the goldsmiths-turned-bankers, while the people fell progressively into their debt.8

Following this model, in nineteenth century America, private banks issued their own banknotes in sums up to ten times their actual reserves in gold. This was called "fractional reserve" banking, meaning that only a fraction of the total deposits managed by a bank were kept in "reserve" to meet the demands of depositors. But periodic runs on the banks when the customers all got suspicious and demanded their gold at the same time caused banks to go bankrupt and made the system unstable. In 1913, the private banknote system was therefore consolidated into a national banknote system under the Federal Reserve (or "Fed"), a privately-owned corporation given the right to issue Federal Reserve Notes and lend them to the U.S. government. These notes, which were issued by the Fed basically for the cost of printing them, came to form the basis of the national money supply.

Twenty years later, the country faced massive depression. The money supply shrank, as banks closed their doors and gold fled to Europe. Dollars at that time had to be 40 percent backed by gold, so for every dollar's worth of gold that left the country, 2.5 dollars in credit money also disappeared. To prevent this alarming deflationary spiral from collapsing the money supply completely, in 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt took the dollar off the gold standard. Today the Federal Reserve still operates on the "fractional reserve" system, but its "reserves" consist of nothing but government bonds (I.O.U.s or debts). The government issues bonds, the Federal Reserve issues Federal Reserve Notes, and they basically swap stacks, leaving the government in debt to a private banking corporation for money the government could have issued itself, debt-free.

Theft by Inflation

M3, the broadest measure of the U.S. money supply, shot up from $3.7 trillion in February 1988 to $10.3 trillion 14 years later, when the Fed quit reporting it. Why the Fed quit reporting it in March 2006 is suggested by John Williams in a website called "Shadow Government Statistics" (shadowstats.com), which shows that by the spring of 2007, M3 was growing at the astounding rate of 11.8 percent per year. Best not to publicize such figures too widely! The question posed here, however, is this: where did all this new money come from? The government did not step up its output of coins, and no gold was added to the national money supply, since the government went off the gold standard in 1933. This new money could only have been created privately as "bank credit" advanced as loans.

The problem with inflating the money supply in this way, of course, is that it inflates prices. More money competing for the same goods drives prices up. The dollar buys less, robbing people of the value of their money. This rampant inflation is usually blamed on the government, which is accused of running the dollar printing presses in order to spend and spend without resorting to the politically unpopular expedient of raising taxes. But as noted earlier, the only money the U.S. government actually issues are coins. In countries in which the central bank has been nationalized, paper money may be issued by the government along with coins, but paper money still composes only a very small percentage of the money supply. In England, where the Bank of England was nationalized after World War II, private banks continue to create 97 percent of the money supply as loans.9

Price inflation is only one problem with this system of private money creation. Another is that banks create only the principal but not the interest necessary to pay back their loans. Since virtually the entire money supply is created by banks themselves, new money must continually be borrowed into existence just to pay the interest owed to the bankers. A dollar lent at 5 percent interest becomes 2 dollars in 14 years. That means the money supply has to double every 14 years just to cover the interest owed on the money existing at the beginning of this 14 year cycle. The Federal Reserve's own figures confirm that M3 has doubled or more every 14 years since 1959, when the Fed began reporting it. 10 That means that every 14 years, banks siphon off as much money in interest as there was in the entire economy 14 years earlier. This tribute is paid for lending something the banks never actually had to lend, making it perhaps the greatest scam ever perpetrated, since it now affects the entire global economy. The privatization of money is the underlying cause of poverty, economic slavery, underfunded government, and an oligarchical ruling class that thwarts every attempt to shake it loose from the reins of power.

This problem can only be set right by reversing the process that created it. Congress needs to take back the Constitutional power to issue the nation's money. "Fractional reserve" banking needs to be eliminated, limiting banks to lending only pre-existing funds. If the power to create money were returned to the government, the federal debt could be paid off, taxes could be slashed, and needed government programs could be expanded. Contrary to popular belief, paying off the federal debt with new U.S. Notes would not be dangerously inflationary, because government securities are already included in the widest measure of the money supply. The dollars would just replace the bonds, leaving the total unchanged. If the U.S. federal debt had been paid off in fiscal year 2006, the savings to the government from no longer having to pay interest would have been $406 billion, enough to eliminate the $390 billion budget deficit that year with money to spare. The budget could have been met with taxes, without creating money out of nothing either on a government print press or as accounting entry bank loans. However, some money created on a government printing press could actually be good for the economy. It would be good if it were used for the productive purpose of creating new goods and services, rather than for the non-productive purpose of paying interest on loans. When supply (goods and services) goes up along with demand (money), they remain in balance and prices remain stable. New money could be added without creating price inflation up to the point of full employment. In this way Congress could fund much-needed programs, such as the development of alternative energy sources and the expansion of health coverage, while actually reducing taxes.

___________________ 1 Wright Patman, A Primer on Money (Government Printing Office, prepared for the Sub-committee on Domestic Finance, House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Currency, 88th Congress, 2nd session, 1964).

2 See Federal Reserve Statistical Release H6, "Money Stock Measures," www.federalreserve.gov/releases/H6/20060223 (February 23, 2006); "United States Mint 2004 Annual Report," www.usmint.gov; Ellen Brown, Web of Debt, www.webofdebt.com (2007), chapter 2.

3 "A Landmark Decision," The Daily Eagle (Montgomery, Minnesota: February 7, 1969), reprinted in part in P. Cook, "What Banks Don't Want You to Know," www9.pair.com/xpoez/money/cook (June 3, 1993).

4 See Bill Drexler, "The Mahoney Credit River Decision," www.worldnewsstand.net/money/mahoney-introduction.html.

5 G. Edward Griffin, "Debt-cancellation Programs," www.freedomforceinternational.org (December 18, 2003).

6 In the Foreword to Irving Fisher, 100% Money (1935), reprinted by Pickering and Chatto Ltd. (1996).

7 Quoted in "Someone Has to Print the Nation's Money . . . So Why Not Our Government?", Monetary Reform Online, reprinted from Victoria Times Colonist (October 16, 1996).

8 Chicago Federal Reserve, "Modern Money Mechanics" (1963), originally produced and distributed free by the Public Information Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, now available on the Internet at http://landru.i-link-2.net/monques/mmm2.html; Patrick Carmack, Bill Still, The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America (video, 1998), text at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/money-masters.html.

9 James Robertson, John Bunzl, Monetary Reform: Making It Happen (2003), www.jamesrobertson.com, page 26.

10 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, "M3 Money Stock (discontinued series)," http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/M3SL.txt.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

How can China’s stimulus plan be working so well, when ours is barely working at all?

2009-09-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php

THE SECRET OF CHINA’S MIRACLE ECONOMY:
THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE
Ellen Brown, August 17th, 2009
www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php

“The banks -- hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.”

-- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009

While the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system, leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a “miracle economy” that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports, but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major downturns and remain in the doldrums. Economist Richard Wolff skeptically observes:

We now have a situation in the world where we have a global capitalist crisis. Everywhere, consumption is down. Everywhere, people are buying fewer goods, including goods from China. How is it possible that in that society, so dependent on the world economy, they could now have an explosive growth? Their stock market is now 100 percent higher than at its low -- nothing remotely like that hardly anywhere in the world, certainly not in the United States or Europe. How is that possible? In order to believe what the Chinese are saying, you would have to agree that in a matter of months, at most a year, no more, they have been able to transform their economy from an export-based powerhouse to a domestically focused industrial engine. Nowhere in the world has that ever taken less than decades.”

How can China’s stimulus plan be working so well, when ours is barely working at all? The answer may be simple: China has not let its banking system run roughshod over its productive economy. Chinese banks work for the people rather than the reverse. So says Samah El-Shahat, a presenter for Al Jazeera English who has a doctorate in economics from the University of London. In an August 10 article titled “China Puts People Before Banks,” she writes:

“China is the one leading economy where the divide – the disconnect between its financial sector and the world normal Chinese people and their businesses inhabit – doesn’t exist. Both worlds are booming again and this is due to the way the government handled its banks. China hasn’t allowed its banking sector to become so powerful, so influential, and so big that it can call the shots or highjack the bailout. In simple terms, the government preferred to answer to its people and put their interests first before that of any vested interest or group. And that is why Chinese banks are lending to the people and their businesses in record numbers.”

What Wolff calls a “global capitalist crisis” is actually a credit crisis; and in China, unlike in the U.S., credit has been flowing freely, not just to the financial sector but to industry and local government. State-owned banks have massively increased lending, with local governments and state enterprises borrowing on a huge scale. The People’s Bank of China estimates that total loans for the first half of 2009 were $1.08 trillion, 50% more than the amount of loans Chinese banks issued in all of 2008. The U.S. Federal Reserve has also engaged in record levels of lending, but its loans have gone chiefly to bail out the financial sector itself, leaving Main Street high and dry. Writes El-Shahat:

“In the UK and US, the financial sector is booming, while the world of normal people seems to be going from bad to worse, unemployment is high, businesses are folding and house foreclosures are still taking place. Wall Street and Main Street might as well be existing on different planets. And this is in large part because banks are still not lending money to the people. In the UK and US, banks have captured all the money from the taxpayers and the cheap money from quantitative easing from central banks. They are using it to shore up, and clean up their balance sheets rather than lend it to the people. The money has been hijacked by the banks, and our governments are doing absolutely nothing about that. In fact, they have been complicit in allowing this to happen.”

Cracks in the Chinese Wall?

The Chinese economy is not perfect. The push to make profits, particularly from foreign investment capital, has encouraged speculative ventures, with a great deal of money going into high-rise apartments and other real estate developments that most people cannot afford. Chinese workers are now complaining of too much capitalism, since they are having to pay for housing, health care and higher education formerly picked up by the State. And while efforts are being made to make more loans available to medium-sized and small businesses, state-owned businesses and large corporations are still getting most of the loans. This is because the banks have been told to tighten their lending standards, and these larger entities are safer credit risks.

Wolff thinks China’s “miracle” is a bubble that is about to burst, with catastrophic consequences. Historically, however, when bubbles have collapsed suddenly it has been because they were punctured by speculators. When the Japanese stock market bubble burst in 1990, and when other Asian countries followed in 1998, it was because foreign speculators were able to attack their currencies with exotic derivatives. The victims tried to defend by buying up their own national currencies with their foreign currency reserves, but the reserves were soon exhausted. Today, China has accumulated so much in the way of dollar reserves that it would be very difficult for speculators to do the same thing to the Chinese stock market. A gradual stock market decline due to natural market forces is something an economy can take in stride.

Economic Role Reversal?
For the time being, at least, China’s stimulus plan is clearly working better than those of the U.S. and the U.K.; and a chief reason it is working better is that the government has a grip on its banking sector. The government can operate the banks’ credit mechanisms in a way that serves public enterprise and trade, because it actually owns the banks, or most of them. Ironically, that feature of China’s economy may have allowed it to get closer to the original American capitalist ideal than the United States itself. China is often referred to as communist, but it has never really been communist as defined in the textbooks, and it is far less so now than formerly. Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping, who opened China to foreign investment after 1978, famously said that it doesn’t matter what color the cat is, so long as it catches mice. Whatever the Chinese economy is called, today it provides a framework that effectively encourages entrepreneurs.

Jim Rogers is an expatriate American investor and financial commentator based in Singapore. He wrote in a 2004 article titled “The Rise of Red Capitalism”:

“Some of the best capitalists in the world live and work in Communist China. . . . No matter how long China’s leaders persist in calling themselves Communists, they seem quite intent on creating the world’s dominant capitalist economy.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. has sunk into what Rogers calls “socialism for the rich.” When ordinary U.S. businesses go bankrupt, they are left to deal with the asphalt jungle on their own; but when banks considered “too big to fail” go bankrupt, we the taxpayers pay the losses while the banks’ owners keep the profits and are allowed to continue speculating with them. The bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer money represents a radical departure from capitalist principles, one that has changed the face of the American economy. The capitalism we were taught in school involved Mom and Pop stores, single-family farms, and small entrepreneurs competing on a level playing field. The government’s role was to set the rules and make sure everyone played fair. But that is not the sort of capitalism we have today. The Mom and Pop stores have been squeezed out by giant chain stores and mega-industries; the small private farms have been bought up by multinational agribusinesses; and Wall Street banks have gotten so powerful that Congressmen are complaining that the banks now own Congress. Giant banks and corporations have rewritten the rules for their own ends. Healthy competition has been replaced by a form of predator capitalism in which small fish are systematically swallowed up by sharks. The result has been an ever-widening gap between rich and poor that represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history.

The Best of Both Worlds

The Chinese solution to a failed banking system would be to nationalize the banks themselves, not just their bad debts. If the U.S. were to adopt that approach, we the people would actually get something of value for our investment – a stable and accountable banking system that belongs to the people. If the word “nationalize” sounds un-American, think “publicly-owned and operated for the benefit of the public,” like public libraries, public parks, and public courts. We need to get our dollars out of Wall Street and back on Main Street, and we can do that only by breaking up our out-of-control private banking monopoly and returning control over money and credit to the people themselves. If the Chinese can have the best of both worlds, so can we.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

Smart Obama and Dumb Bush gave 700 billion to Economic Terrorist "Banksters [who] have Robbed well over $100 Billion Dollars from Taxpayers"

2009-09-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

"Since when is threatening the detonation of the economy unless 700 billion is handed over immediately not economic terrorism."

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1364-America-Is-Running-Out-Of-Rope.html

America Is Running Out Of Rope
Oh no, we don't cheat:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. research analyst Marc Irizarry's published rating on mutual-fund manager Janus Capital Group Inc. was a lackluster "neutral" in early April 2008. But at an internal meeting that month, the analyst told dozens of Goldman's traders the stock was likely to head higher, company documents show.

Nothing like selling bonds out the front door and shorting them on your prop desk, right? Oh wait, Goldman did that too!

Securities laws require firms like Goldman to engage in "fair dealing with customers," and prohibit analysts from issuing opinions that are at odds with their true beliefs about a stock. Steven Strongin, Goldman's stock research chief, says no one gains an unfair advantage from its trading huddles, and that the short-term-trading ideas are not contrary to the longer-term stock forecasts in its written research.

Riiiight. And I'm the Easter Bunny.

The tips usually go to top clients who have expressed interest in having the information and have short-term investment horizons, he says. Goldman doesn't want to overload other clients with information that isn't relevant to them, he says. "We are not in the business of serving thousands of retail customers," he says.

Let me guess: They also go to the proprietary (inside) traders that are gambling with the firm's money (and your "liquidity guarantee" as a taxpayer, since they're a BANK now.) Am I right?

Research-department employees prepare telephone scripts, then call top clients, typically several hours after the meeting has ended. Goldman says its in-house traders are prohibited from trading on the tips until after they've been relayed to clients.

Documents reviewed by the Journal indicate that anywhere from six to 60 clients are contacted, depending on the investment.

Oh, its even better. Let's see, we have a computer program that's engaged in a bit of "high frequency trading", and we have the guys that run our own trading (which includes that) that are in on the recommendations and they even know when these recommendations go out to the "select customers"!

There's nothing wrong with this, right? Nothing wrong with having a "slight edge' in knowing up front what's going to be said to these "good" (read: they have and swing around lots of money) customers?

Pull the other one boys.

Last year, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the industry's self-regulatory body, proposed new rules meant to clarify existing disclosure obligations under the rule requiring "fair dealing" with all clients. Firms could issue contradictory ratings as long as clients were told that such inconsistencies were possible.

Yeah, ok. Shall we hire some more foxes to guard that henhouse?

What sort of scheme-laced system do we have here? These institutions have sold securities out the front door they're shorting out the back (subprime mortgage bonds), they're disseminating "short-term opinions" that differ from their published research reports, and even better, their own proprietary trading desks are in on the latter, so if and when the move starts they can get in on the action with their "high frequency trading" too!

You won't hear CNBS talking about this, I'll wager. Nor will you hear them talk about their parent company discuss their lobbying expenditures - the highest of any company in the first quarter at a mind-blowing $7.2 million dollars. Zerohedge has provided a copy of the disclosure form, which reads like a who's who of "how to screw the consumer", including issues such as the Credit Card Bill of Rights, the disapproval resolution on the second half of TARP, proposed TARP reform and accountability, the mortgage reform and anti-predatory lending bill and more.

The disclosure does not tell you which side or exactly what position has been taken by these paid hacks, but that's not hard to figure out - no corporation is going to lobby for something that would cost it money (while spending copious amounts of money), so the direction of these "contacts" is clear on their face. Nothing more need be said.

This is a serious issue for all Americans, since allegedly the "fourth estate", that is, the media, is supposed to be a check and balance on government (and corporate) behavior. But what happens when the media is the corporation? When conglomerates become entwined in the news system to the point that anything that would go against the corporation is suppressed by that very same media? When editorial independence is lost?

I have (as have others) heard CNBS anchors "slip" in the past and say things on the air that strongly hint (or outright state) that their producers don't want a certain slant covered. One wonders whether that producer just had their phone ring - and it was the executive offices of GE on the other end.

Let's be clear: These banksters have robbed well over $100 billion dollars from taxpayers and citizens via various schemes in the last decade. These scams have included securitizing loans that they either knew or should have known were laced with fraud, in some cases shorting them while selling them on to other people. It includes outrageously-complex and intentionally-obfuscated securities "packages" for municipalities which have resulted in huge losses for the town (and huge fees and profits for the bank.) It has included marketing "auction rate" securities which were claimed to be as liquid and safe as cash, when in fact nothing of the sort was true. The schemes and scams run the gamut but at their core was the intentional obfuscation of the true nature of the risk embedded in these instruments so that the dupe (that would be you, your town, your state) would wind up losing money all for their benefit: you would enter into a complex swap transaction you didn't understand, you'd buy a bubble house with an OptionARM after being told you "definitely" could refinance before payments would go up, your kid was sold an expensive educational loan package without being told that it was unable to be discharged in bankruptcy, you were given a credit card with 27 pages of fine print, and buried somewhere in there was vague language letting the company jack your interest rate to anything it wanted - including the 36% it did jack it to - if you missed an electric bill by three days.

Then, when the game of musical chairs ended and all this debt that could not possibly be paid off started to default these very same banksters went to Congress through Paulson and Bernanke, the chiefs of the bankster scam parade, and in my opinion literally committed economic terrorism: hand over $2 trillion dollars hiding all but $700 billion, or we detonate the entirety of the economy and everyone literally starves.

How does this differ from an old-fashioned Al-Quaida terrorist who calls in a nuclear bomb threat? "Hand over $2 trillion dollars or New York City will be vaporized."

Hmmmmm... sounds kinda like the same thing to me!

Now let's juxtapose this with the fact that every Congressperson took an oath to defend The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

So riddle me this my fellow Americans: How is it that Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, and both Presidents Bush and Obama are still free men instead of being housed at GITMO? How is it that on that fateful night in September of 2008 when Bernanke and Paulson "briefed" Congress and demanded $700 billion in ransom and a blank check to back-door an unlimited amount in "guarantees" and "pass-throughs" to their banking buddies the Sargeant At Arms was not immediately called to place these goons under arrest pending indictment and prosecution?

The next question is equally obvious and leads one down some pretty disturbing paths: If there is NOT ONE man or woman Congress who will discharge THEIR oath of office, is there anyone left in this country who took an identical oath that will?

The worst part is that it didn't end with payment of the ransom. No, the banks didn't come clean, they didn't clear their balance sheets, they didn't take their losses using the backstop they had managed to secure through threat of imminent economic doom.

On the contrary: They lied some more! They in fact lobbied Congress and had them bring pressure on FASB, threatening to legislate legalization of accounting fraud, and twisted FASB's arm into issuing what amounted to an executive order making legal any and all lies about asset valuation! We now know this happened because in point of fact the amount of loss that has been seen in the form of write-downs when banks fail has roughly doubled from last year to this, and these are not small numbers: we're talking about going from roughly 15% to roughly 35!

Who eats that? You do. The FDIC is required to make your deposit whole, but they "assess" (tax) the banks. Who pays? You do, of course: your bank re-orders your deposits and withdrawals to generate nearly forty billion dollars in "overdraft fees" and similar penalties over the last year, they jack your interest rate to the moon and drop your CD rate to 1% and less.

In the meantime as I pointed out last week your personal "interest spread" has ballooned - more than doubling against you. In terms of GDP and economic activity this has brought a structural near-2% subtraction to GDP that will be with us until the banks either confess and are wiped out OR they "work it off", with the latter option requiring more than a decade. California's unemployment rate reflects the outcome of this idiocy, having risen to 11.9% - our largest state.

And before you believe the "green shoot" mantra on housing, you better pay attention to the California home start numbers: Permits for July were down a staggering 47.4% over the prior year.

Nor does the "good news" end here. This Friday, after the market closed (of course) the Obama Administration confessed to what the CBO had said earlier this year: Over the next 10 years the government will add $9 trillion dollars to our public debt, up more than $2 trillion from their previous claims.

Let's be clear about this: This is not a "80%" increase. Oh no, its much worse than that. You see, about 40% of the debt is in fact held in what are called "intergovernment holdings" - that is, the scams known as Social Security and Medicare (the subject of another recent Ticker.) The externally-held debt today totals about $6 trillion dollars, so this "admission" means we're going to try to add 150% to that.

I say "try" because this year's interest payments are likely to total some $400 billion or so, and against a GDP of $13 trillionish (down from the peak) that is roughly 3% of GDP for interest cost. Today.

The sustainability of this level of debt (today) requires that interest rates not rise, for if they do so will the payments. And that's a problem because historically (over the last 100 years or so) every time a nation has gotten to around 6% of GDP for interest payments both its monetary and political systems have imploded. Argentina anyone?

BUT IF WE ACTUALLY ADD 150% TO THAT $6 TRILLION IN DEBT, EVEN IF INTEREST RATES DO NOT RISE, WE WILL EXCEED THIS CRITICAL LEVEL OF INTEREST PAYMENTS BY MORE THAN 50%. INDEED, WE WILL CROSS THE 6% THRESHOLD, BY MY ESTIMATES, SOME TIME IN 2012, AND THAT EVENT HAS A HIGH PROBABILITY OF DESTROYING OUR NATION OUTRIGHT.

You might think that all these bailouts and handouts would have produced a stable banking system. You'd have thought wrong. Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics has updated his bank ratings for the second quarter: they now rate 1,882 banks as "failing" (or just "F" if you prefer) which is up a whopping 16.5% from the end of March - just three months ago. The number of banks with "A" or "A+" ratings fell by 21% during the same time.

The problem is that "hide the bad stuff" games (no matter what particular sort of fraud you're engaged in) doesn't change the outcome - it just changes the when. The "what" doesn't change. That which is dead and decomposing simply stinks up the place more, since you refused to throw it out.

The good news is that some banks have raised capital during these past few months of investor optimism. But a host of operational problems remains at many institutions. In addition to loan losses and rock-bottom recovery rates on assets they’re trying to unload, for example, banks also face rising expenses (because they’re paying to carry properties that generate scant — or zero — revenue). All of this cuts significantly into earnings, which banks desperately need to bolster their battered financial positions.

Optimisim? You mean a stock market rocketshot based on lies, right? After all, if the true condition of these institutions did not improve, then where did the "optimism" come from if not false claims of solvency and good times just ahead? Never mind the statistical nasty: the majority of the daily volume on the stock exchanges over the last couple of months has been centered in a half-dozen "liars stocks" such as AIG and Citibank. A healthy rally? Uh, no; where's the volume-based broad support? Missing, that's where.

Of course these institutions issued stock into that sort of market environment. Why not? There was no reason not to - FASB gave them a pass after being literally told to sanction lying and fraudulent reports of asset values by Congress, and they complied. This in turn let them issue "glowing" first quarter earnings that were based on nothing other than one-time gains and lightening loss reserves based on better-than-previous valuations.

The rude awakening is that the cash-flow from these "assets" does not change with the stroke of a pen, however. You can't fake a deposit ticket for very long, and a non-performing asset (for instance, a homeowner who is living free in his house because he's not paying his mortgage!) is still a non-performing asset. Nothing changes that other than actual performance, and yet that performance is and remains missing.

The so-called pundits put it this way:

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Federal Reserve said the world's largest economy appeared to be "leveling out" and many economists see a second-half rebound.

It all adds up to an improving picture ahead of an economic summit next month in Pittsburgh of the world's top 20 industrial and developing economies.

Really? May I politely ask "how"?

The entire cusp of this rests here:

But until American consumers begin spending again, and so long as jobs are still being lost, the durability of any recovery is questionable. Major retailers reported this week that U.S. consumers are continuing to rein in spending on all but basics.

Despite slight recent improvements in many U.S. economic statistics, many consumers have not seen a change in their lives.

Nor will they on a durable basis until the fraud and scamming stops because they can't. The interest spread between savings and spending, as I noted above, has been driven to historic wide levels as a means of grifting off billions of dollars from consumers to cover up the banksters frauds! That's not money the banksters bonus out and thus spend into the economy either - it literally disappears into the black hole of fraudulent accounting and coverups!

Thus far there has been no appetite for putting a stop to this in Washington DC, but the proletariat are starting to figure it out - they've been had. Had on "stimulus", had on "TARP", had on so-called "health care reform", had on their CD rates going to the floor and their credit card rates going to the moon, had on everything.

It's all one gigantic scam, and anger is seething beneath the surface, as it should be. Youtube is exploding with videos of demonstrations at "Town Hall" meetings, and those protests are not just about Health Care. I've watched over two dozen of them so far, and in virtually every one TARP and Bailouts are being discussed as well.

The people have figured it out - they said not just no but hell no back in September and October, and Congress ignored them. The people correctly surmised that this was in fact economic terrorism and correctly told their Congressfolk NOT to pay the demanded ransom. Now we're seeing our nation systematically looted and destroyed and again, Congress is ignoring the people.

The people want justice. They want the grift and fraud excised. They want those who blew these huge bubbles for their own personal aggrandizement and profit while ripping off the common man to get their just desserts - an indictment and a prison sentence, not another billion-dollar bonus.

Most Americans understand that they were gullible, they fell for it, and they're partly responsible as a consequence. They "get it" in that regard - they came, they saw, they bought - even though they knew they couldn't pay.

But their acts were not those of lone rangers. They were goaded on at every corner - "you can afford this house", "let's qualify you to see how many bedrooms you can buy", "let's work a deal on this car", "here's another credit card with a $10,000 line", "here's a 1% OptionARM refinance with a $10,000 cash-out."

All of these hucksters knew full well that the so-called "consumer" was in fact a patsy. They ran their credit, they ran their assets, they ran their employment. In many cases the brokers and bankers even falsified the numbers themselves; I've seen proof of it myself in documents sent to me where the handwriting doesn't match the signatory or the printing of the applicant's name on the income declared. Who filled it in? Not the applicant.

The people are willing to take their pain. But they demand, with solid justification, that those who ripped them off also bear their pain for what they have done.

Washington has gone tone-deaf to the facts - an intentional deafness engendered by millions of dollars of campaign "contributions" (read: bribes) being handed out like candy, all financed by the people who are being robbed!

The banksters not only ripped everyone off and got bailed out after doing it by threatening to blow up the economic world BUT THEY ARE STILL RIPPING EVERYONE OFF TODAY and using a small piece of the grift to continue to buy Congress at the same time!

Not a damn thing has changed, except that we are lurching closer and closer to the cliff of national insolvency and both economic and political failure as a nation. The inability to fund the operating expenses of our government is quite possible. Social Security and Medicare have gone into deficit years earlier than expected and these programs have no money - they have only "IOUs" and to turn them back into money Treasury will have to sell more bonds.

But who will buy them? The Chinese? Why? Bernanke is lying about monetizing the debt - in fact he lied under oath - but the currency markets are not fooled.

The dollar is in the toilet and threatening to break all support levels. If it does, it may collapse to as low as 40, which will in turn rocket oil north to $300 or more and gasoline to $10!

If that happens it is too late to stop it and too late to reverse course. What we now know as a middle class will be reduced to sheer destitution - literal destitution.

What are the odds that, under this scenario, some of the billions of rounds of ammunition that have been purchased and stockpiled by Americans who have gotten rather "uneasy" over where our nation is going find their way into unlawful use? Rather high I wager. After all, the banksters may have bought Congress and the White House but they don't own the guns, and a desperate, hungry man is a dangerous man, especially when he was formerly a middle-class American with a good job who had his future, and that of his wife and children ruined as a direct consequence of the lawless, conniving acts of a handful of "elites" who ripped him off twice - first with his "OptionARM" that gnawed his arm off and then again by going to Washington, extorting more than $12 trillion in bailouts, handouts and guarantees with which they paid themselves bonuses instead of clearing their balance sheets!

Over a year ago I started writing and calling Congress, including letters I faxed to all 535 members. In it I called for Congress to put aside $200 billion dollars - a big fat wad of money - to cover the potential need to house, feed and clothe one quarter of this nation for up to 12 months.

I meant it then and I mean it now.

We are not on the cusp of recovery, we are on the precipice of disaster. Whether we avert it is an open question but this much is certain - if we wait until external funding disappears it will be too late to prepare and too late to act in furtherance of our nation's interests. When gasoline is $10/gallon as is heating oil the price of food will more than double, heating costs in the northeast will quadruple and millions will either starve, freeze to death or both. At the same time the ability to fund Social Security and Medicare will vanish - at the precise moment when it can't.

The economy cannot survive another commodity shock - Roubini agrees, and he sees the possibility - but he calls the potential cause "speculation."

Nonsense: there is nothing speculative about money printing and intentional currency debasement. This is an intentional act being promulgated by our government for the express purpose of papering over what has been the largest fraud and scam ever run in the history of mankind. The banks are indeed using this "profit opportunity" to buy and stockpile oil along with other commodities via both physical delivery and futures contracts, but this is not speculation - a bet made on an uncertain outcome.

Rather, it is a bet made on a CERTAIN outcome that is being created by the government as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of the demand (which was and is being met!) by the very same banksters to legalize the fraud and deceit that got us in this mess in the first place!

On the point of "greenback emissions" Warren Buffett has it right but a prescription to fix what ails us is missing, so I'll supply it: we must detoxify the drunk and lock up the bartenders, extortionists and their accomplices - all of them.

This means the end of "stimulus", it means the end of subsidization of grift and fraud, it means prosecution of those who have scammed throughout the last ten years, it means the cancellation of the so-called "guarantees" for the banking sector and it means a relentless cadre of regulators who go bank-to-bank - literally, to each and every one of them, marking every asset to the market and closing every last insolvent financial institution, no matter how large or small, barring for life from any financial role and prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law any executive in any firm that is found to have fraudulently overstated asset valuations, no matter by how much.

It means biting the bullet and recognizing that we cannot borrow our way to prosperity, nor can we solve a "declined" credit card problem by opening another one - either individually or as a nation.

It means Congress must force The Fed to disgorge every MBS they hold that does not have a full-faith-and-credit guarantee, we must allow real rates to rise in the economy and we must allow housing and other asset prices to contract to where they are supported by the underlying economic activity.

Yes, this means homes will get cheaper - a lot cheaper. So what? Those who don't own a house now or who get foreclosed upon would certainly like to buy a house at a lower price, not a higher one!

It means that we must stop the looting and start prosecuting, we must put Glass-Steagall back in place, and we must force all of these super-conglomerates to split off any trading and asset activities from their regulated banking counterparts.

We must repudiate all CDS contracts that cannot be proved to have 100% asset backing on a nightly margin basis, without exception. That means central-counterparty surveillance and clearing for all such instruments - period.

We must add criminal and civil liability to all so-called "securitizations" so those who sell garbage through either willful ignorance or intentional deceit cannot avoid liability and neither can the purchaser claim "ignorance" and we must ban all off-balance sheet vehicles, without exception.

We must add an "or else" to every regulatory law, so that the "or else" for robbing a bank by intentionally overstating asset valuations is the same (20 years) as when you rob that same bank with a gun. We must put an "or else" into The Federal Reserve Act, the OCC and OTS' chartering documents, the enabling law for the SEC and all other agencies so that those who allegedly serve the public are held to account when they knowingly look the other way or even actively conspire with lawless action in the institutions they regulate.

The People have and continue to speak, and they're pissed. It is long past time for Congress to get off its ass and perform its job - to represent the will of the people, not the cadre of lobbyists who continually press for more grift, more fraud, more scams and more lies.

We have come to the end of our rope as a nation and we must climb back up, even though it will be difficult, even though those who stole, cheated and robbed must be imprisoned, and even though the economic fallout has been and will be harsh.

We have no alternative in that under us there is no more rope but there is an an active volcano, and if we let go, we will not only fall but be consumed by the lava below, and if we try to hang on here, without excising the fraud and grift we will slip and fall to our deaths as the monkey on our back continually increases in weight.

It is time for Americans to demand that our government do the right thing, and it is time for Congress and The Administration to shut up and listen instead of prattling on about this or that add-on to the scam of the day.

Health Care "reform" is a laudable goal, but we cannot waste our time on that or indeed any other priority until we truly stabilize this nation's currency and economic system.

How to Teach Purity

2009-09-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

By Richard Salbato

I was asked by many people to expand on my last Newsletter, Sins Against Purity Cause Wars. Father Bart believes we should start a movement within the Church on Purity and Dating. I love the idea, but personally I am a hermit and too involved with my own family to organize anything. I will, however, offer guidelines and suggestions for those teachers and priests who want to bring Purity and Virginity back to the Church. For over ten years now I have been writing Newsletters on Moral Theology because more people today go to Hell for sins against morals than any other reason. Some of those Newsletters are linked below.

I suppose the most controversial Newsletter I have ever written on Morals is one of the first I ever wrote. It was a result of people asking me why I did not get involved in the Right to Life Marches and Sit-ins that my friends were involved in. Quickly without even thinking I said, “Abortion is not the problem.” At the time I did not even know what I meant by that but I went home and wrote out the answer. That was 10 years ago. Today I tried to find it on my web site, but it disappeared so I re-posted it. Abortion is not the Problem

I’ll try to not repeat anything here that I have already written in the above document but these two Newsletters should be read together. In the Newsletter, Abortion is not the Problem, I make the point that dating is the mother of sins against the flesh in our times. I saw this in confession when I said that I promise to “avoid the mere occasion of sin”. I remembered the movie about Vincent Van Gogh when his friend said, “You paint to fast.” He snapped back: “You look to fast.”

Like most people when I saw that Padre Pio had separate confessions for men and women, even separate rooms, I though he was just a little too old fashioned. When I read that boys and girls never went to the same schools, I thought they were just old fashioned. When I learned about “going out parties”, I just thought they were old fashioned. When I learned about “finishing schools”, I just thought they were old fashioned. I watched old black and white movies from the 50s and 60s and saw that even when in love people never even touched, but thought how old fashioned that was. Perhaps I thought: “Maybe I am looking to fast.

Maybe people back then knew things we have forgotten. Maybe they were the smart ones and we are the stupid ones. Maybe I should investigate why they did what they did and why we do what we do. Maybe we are accepting as moral what is the root of immorality.

Lets look at the problem today of sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, the rise of divorces, the rise of people living together without marriage, the rise of pedophilia, the rise of abortions, and the lack of morals throughout society. Why has sex replaced love? Why is there a rise in frigidity among men and women?

Teaching Sexual Relationships

I teach my grandchildren, 13 years of age to 19 years of age, weekly religion classes. For adults I have structured classes but for teens I just answer questions. In this age bracket they want to know about relationships more than anything else. They want to live in the world but by God’s rules. This is hard. To understand how hard, you have to know the peer pressure and the need to be accepted. I had to first teach them what is natural to our nature and why it is good. God created what is natural for good reasons, but He also gave us the moral law that we might regulate what is natural. When you teach about sex, you must not make it a bad thing, because it is a wonderful and holy thing that God created.

I use the example of soil and dirt. Both are the same thing, but soil is in place used for what God intended. Dirt is soil out of place and not used for what God (nature) intended.

God created man to be attracted to women, and he starts this attraction at a very young age, 8 to 10 years old. Man does not know why but he just likes women. Women start younger because they mature much faster. A woman is sexually mature about 10 years sooner than man is. She is also more sexually aggressive. You are going to disagree with me right now, but I will explain this later.

God designed this in man and women because He said be fruitful and multiply. Even in the animal world it is almost emotionally and physically forced on animals to have sex for the continuation of the species. In the animal world we call this being “in heat” but we fail to see it in humans. We also fail to see the family structure of animals, birds and fish, and we think of family as a man made thing rather than something natural to our nature. When ever we violate what is natural to our nature, we end with a disoriented nature, a sick nature.

God designed woman to mature physically and mentally faster than man, because the nature of man is not so social or loving, whereas woman is both social and loving at an early age. It takes longer for man to mature and to even be able to support a family and wife. Because of this difference I advise both men and women to keep this ten year difference in mind when looking for a wife or husband.

In the old days a woman’s “coming out party” was about when she was 16 years of age. This is when the family invited all the young men to their home (with their parents) to show off their daughter, who was now of age to look for a husband. For the first time in her life she would dance with boys, in front of her parents. Before going to this Coming Out Party, she would go to Finishing School. In this school she would not learn language or math, but how to walk, how to act, how to greet people of different classes, how to eat, and in short, how to be a lady. Men also went to Finishing School but they did not call it that. They learned manors, a trade and manliness, even sometimes how to fight. The boys were also taught dancing and proper dress for different occasions.

Today the average age for women starting their period, and therefore their sexual yearning, is about 12 to 13 instead of 16 years. I think it is because of TV and the promotion of sex in everything we do. The brain affects the body and this exposure to sex causes people to mature physically too soon. I say too soon because mentally they are not ready. The balance of mental and physical maturity is disrupted.

Now I am going to say something that will surprise most people unless you think about it a great deal without looking too fast. Men do not really want sex before they are at least 17 or 18. They do not even want to make out or get too involved with girls other than keeping them company. Boys really want romance but not sex.

The reason we think this is crazy is that boys seem so aggressive today, but this aggressiveness is caused by peer pressure. Boys are made to think they are not men unless they have sex and even press for it. In truth even when pressured by other boys and even the girls, they are hoping the girl says, “No!” Sometimes a girl will even drop a boy who does not want sex. This is true today and common but not true in the past. Because of peer pressure and a lying promotion of open sex on TV, most girls think they are not loved unless the boy at least tries to have sex with them.

This is a huge problem for boys between 12 and 17 years of age because although they are capable of sex they are not ready for it mentally or physically. They feel like they have to do it but often this will cause problems in them that may last the rest of their lives. This might become a hidden dislike for women, or at least disrespect. This mental and physical difference in age of men and women sometimes produces homosexuality in men because they are threatened by women but do not know why. Unlike what you read, homosexuality in American is only ½ of one percent of the people and not 10% but they do not want to admit that they are mentally sick caused from some sexual trauma. This mental sickness borders on the demonic because it so violates nature. It often leads to pedophilia, because sex for nothing but personal satisfaction and not out of love ends up by hating all that is pure. It is even a way of showing hatred for God. The pedophile hates God and everything pure.

Female homosexuals have a different cause. They are not born that way as our “tolerant” society wants you to believe. A woman’s sexuality is more mental than physical and the physical is mostly external and not internal. A man can somewhat enjoy sex even with someone he does not like. But a woman must be somewhat romanced and treated kindly before she really enjoys sex. When she continually has unfulfilled sexual experiences over and over she turns to the person who understands female sexuality, another woman.

“My children might “make out” a little bit but they do not have sex.” This is what some parents say to me but it is bull crap. I have an easier time explaining what is wrong with this to children than I do to adults. Think about the soil and the dirt. God designed the human body perfectly. It get hungry when it is time to eat but it can be trained to only be hungry once a day, like in my case.

God wants married people to have sex because it is good and even wonderful. But their first has to be some stimulation that makes sex possible. God designed the human body in such a way that tender touching and kissing stimulates the body so that it is capable of sex. In the man it even causes the sperm to be generated so that birth is possible. In the woman it lubricates so that sex is possible. This can start by just holding hands.

This is good and even wonderful when two people are married. It is even sacramental and one of the greatest expressions of love there is. However, what happens then when two people stimulate their bodies for sex but then do not have it. The stimulation calms down a little but does not go away. It builds up in the same way that smelling good food over and over and not eating it effects the body. The next day the sexual drive still lingers and might manifest itself in many ways. If this continues it could produce aggressive behavior or even ways to escape the feelings through alcohol or drugs.

This must to be explained so that “making out” is not thought about as innocent or sinless. It is very sinful and is at the root of all sexual sins. This is why un-chaperoned dating is so wrong and the root of sexual sins, the main road to Hell.

Men are voyeurs, meaning that they can be sexually stimulated by visual things. God created man this way for the same reason he created women so beautiful. As the bible says, even the angels are tempted by the beauty of women. Since sexual stimulation without sex causes all kinds of root problems that are all sinful and even mentally harmful, it behooves women to be very careful how they dress or act. This does not mean not to dress for beauty but just not to dress provocatively. It also means that good men should understand that any visual sexual stimulation on TV or the printed media should be avoided for good mental health and good morals. Personally I do not understand why people would even want to watch two people kiss. These things are personal and not any more public than going to the bathroom.

What then is purity? Purity is not sexless although many sacrifice all sex for the Kingdom of God. Married people who have very active sexual lives can be very pure and even saintly. Many married people with lots of children have been canonized as saints. Purity is not dressing in sackcloth. Purity is not avoiding the opposite sex. Purity starts and stops in the brain. Purity is a mental attitude more than a physical compliance. One can do all the right things according to God’s will and law but without being pure of heart, you cannot be called pure.

When you want to obey all the laws of nature and the laws of God because it is the best way to be charitable to yourself, to others and to God, then you can be called pure of heart. This is what it means to love God and others with your heart and soul. Prudish, Victorian people are not pure, they are selfish. The pure of heart wants to give all to God and others using the gifts God gave for good.

This is not the time to talk about this because I want parents and children to read this, but just before marriage men and women should be taught that it is God’s will and the law of love to make sure that your loved one enjoys sex. This might seem obvious but it is a big problem in marriages and does not have to be. I do not think this should be taught until just before marriage because it can lead to sinful thoughts and acts if done too soon.

You would be surprised to know that in some societies in the Middle East and Africa they castrate women because they do not believe women should enjoy six. This is also a sin against nature and God, because God designed sex as an expression of love, joy and pleasure. It is a lack of love when someone does not care if the other does not have this joy and pleasure. I will not talk more on this, but those who want information on this can email me.

Our Lady of America calls all Americans to purity. Our Lady of Nicaragua predicts World War III. The two apparitions go hand in hand, because there will be a World War III and if America changes her ways regarding sex and abortion, we can escape the brunt of this war and even lead the world back to peace. The main recruiting tool of Radical Moslems is the moral corruption of the west. Let us take that tool out of their hands, and put God on our side. Let us also take the tool of justice out of God’s hand by ending the root cause of abortion, dating and free sex.

Stop un-chaperoned dating.

Richard Salbato

Dear Friends and Benefactors

"The debasement of noblest things is the worst." This famous apothegm is no more applicable than to matters of purity and impurity.

One of the most wide spread vices of our day and age is that of impurity. It is a vice so easy to fall into yet once it takes hold seems impossible to overcome. Part of the reason for this is that, as St. John Climacus says:

Our relentless enemy, the teacher of fornication, whispers that God is lenient and particularly merciful to this passion, since it is so very natural. Yet if we watch the wiles of the demons we will observe that after we have actually sinned they will affirm that God is a just and inexorable judge. They say one thing to lead us into sin, another thing to overwhelm us in despair.

Another reason why many are not victorious in battling this vice is that they do not value the opposing virtue of purity. They fail to realize that as there is no vice more loathsome and horrible than impurity, so the most charming and beautiful of all virtues is purity. But why is this so?

In the first place, purity is so highly valued because it is the crown of all other virtues. It presupposes the presence of many if not all other virtues. The pure of heart love prayer and have the virtue of piety. They must at all times consider their infirmity and pray for grace and strength thus practicing humility. They also love the virtues of penance, self-denial and charity and they must have the virtues of meekness, patience and zeal for the glory of God. They must also practice the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, in such a perfect manner that the other virtues find strength and support in them.

Another reason is that there is no virtue which demands greater sacrifice and more care than purity. St. Jerome calls this virtue a living martyrdom since it lasts for one’s entire life. We must guard not only one of our senses or faculties, but all of them. All of our senses and faculties are exposed to temptations against holy purity, and so we must keep them all under careful control. It is this constant watchfulness and self-denial which the Fathers of the Church regarded as a martyrdom.

Because of this self-denial, which purity demands, some may have the impression that the life of the pure is sad and gloomy; they are mistaken. The Garden of Paradise contained many trees but only one was forbidden to our first parents. The fruit they were allowed to eat was far more choice than that of the one forbidden to them. Because they chose to enjoy the forbidden fruit they were no longer able to enjoy the others. Likewise, the pure of heart know many more joys, pleasures and consolations that are withheld from those who give themselves up to impurity.

Purity is reflected in our bearing and character even though it be too subtle to analyze or explain. The pure young man or young woman will be of a happy mind having a cheerfulness that does not depend on the weather. Their eyes sparkle with a fire not of this world and they see beauty and charm where the sinful see only the commonplace. The mountains, trees and flowers, lawful gratification, labor and rest, all give to the pure a gratification of which the worldly minded have no idea. How much better it is to enjoy such peace and tranquility of mind, than to suffer the tortures of conscience living in fear that hidden sins will become known.

Nothing in all Creation is grander than the sight of a pure boy or girl growing up in all their strength and beauty of health, with an innocent look in their eyes. Purity ennobles and elevates our body, giving it a charm that is the delight of God and His angels. Even the wicked, who are unwilling to be pure themselves, are compelled to admire and respect purity in others.

Nor is it just the body of the pure that God in His infinite generosity adorns but He beautifies the soul far more. They that go to heaven upon the path of purity receive the choicest blessings and graces. Through these graces they receive warning beforehand of impending temptations and danger. Because of the greater and more pure love which purity gives they are able to undergo any sacrifice, even to suffer death, rather than forfeit the priceless jewel of purity.

Many saints were of the opinion that most people lose their salvation through impurity. If so, we may say that the virtue of purity is one of the safest marks of belonging to the elect. Our Savior has told us little about the joys and rewards of the world to come, but He did reveal that the pure will receive a special reward standing nearest to His Throne, where they will sing a song of praise that no one else will be able to sing.

Living in a world steeped in immodesty and impurity it may seem impossible to go unscathed. But we can preserve this precious jewel and pass through life unmarked if we rely on God’s grace and put forth the effort, following the example of the saints.

The saints were able to fight off temptation because they constantly lived in the presence of God. They had one thought uppermost in their minds —wherever they were, God was by their side. By constantly keeping God before their mind, they had the strength to suffer anything for love of Him and thus turned suffering into joy and trials into victories. When others were overwhelmed by even the smallest temptations because they had lost sight of God, the saints accepted and conquered even the fiercest assaults as a matter of course. The thought of God’s presence gave them strength, consolation, hope and happiness.

The saints were able to keep God before their minds because they lived in a spirit of prayer. They did not make the mistake of thinking prayer to be a merely formal affair; a few minutes set apart in a completely different atmosphere from the rest of their day. Rather they had the constant pious disposition to connect everything they did or saw with God. Every act became prayer for them. Every act of penance, self-denial and charity was nothing else than prayer. Their entire life was transformed into one constant prayer.

If sinners would go to Confession and Holy Communion as frequently and with the same zealous dispositions as the saints, they, too, would become saints. Generally speaking, however, those that need the Sacraments the most are the most negligent in receiving them.

Besides the presence of God, the saints also are shining examples of devotion to our Blessed Mother. True devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is taken as a guarantee of eternal happiness. She does not fail to obtain favors and blessings for those who honor her. Hence it should not surprise us that her special admirers receive special benefits; as shown in the lives of the saints. Thus Mary can and will obtain for the children that love her most one of the greatest favors, the jewel and crown of all virtues.

The virtue of purity is, therefore, worth our every effort and its beauty cannot be over-rated. It is something so refined and heavenly that our weak human vision can scarcely grasp the greatness of its grandeur. We shall only fully appreciate it in heaven. But until then we must fight for it, and keep its beauty, as far as we can, before us.

Sincerely yours in the Precious Blood of Jesus,

Fr. John D. Fullerton

Why do the Leftists and Gay Culture’s Rejection of Objective Truth leads to Sexually Abusing Children?

By Fred Martinez

Professor Allan Bloom, author of "The Closing of the American Mind, " said that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche's influence on public education – and he could have said 30 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth. Bloom said relativism "is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society."
The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche's will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement "relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution "corrupt" and demanded a "black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted."
The liberal "Catholics" speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche's will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.
According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist "clerical homosexual network" extends to "bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders."
The "real" Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.
Meanwhile, the Nietzschean "Catholics" are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered ... [and] under no circumstances can they be approved."
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.
Norman Mailer, in his book "Prisoner of Sex," shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:
"So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. ... Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb ... no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator."
This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only "currency" left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.
Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.
Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.
Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.
Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with sex and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law. If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law? If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their "inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society," as Bloom said.
If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian power tactics of prison homosexuals. The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the "culture" of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.
The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don't accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn't accept the new "culture" and isn't a "team player."
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in "Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited":
"It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going 'to change the culture.'
"However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to 'convert' that the prisoner did. ... Consider, for example, what it means to impose a 'culture of teamwork' based on 'openness and mutual trust' in an individualistic society."
By using this process, the leftists with the media's marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a "mob mentality," which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the "elite" because they accept the "culture of teamwork" and have "openness" to the new definitions.
These persons wishing to be part of the "culture" or "team" are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:
"'Cognitive redefinition' involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition."
Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of modern America culture. He said, "Words such as 'charisma,' 'lifestyle,' 'commitment,' 'identity,' and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche ... are now practically American slang."
But the most important Nietzschean slang word is "values."
"Values" are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.
One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.
Nietzsche's philosophy is summed up by Bloom as
Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one's oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.
As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or "posits" one's values on a meaningless world.
Previous to Freud's psychoanalysis, Nietzsche's writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche "had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live."
Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was " profoundly influenced by Nietzsche," according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.
The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.
Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to 'become his real self.' Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.
Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously "unscientific" model of the "symbolic language of the unconscious."
Freud's pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung's unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the "active imagination" to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.
He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.
Many Christians thought this "language of the soul" was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn't understand was that Jung's theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.
Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.
Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung "not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung's active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called 'gods' (archetypes),' and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly."
Within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought, a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist is moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner "beings" that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan "gods."
As C.S. Lewis predicted in "The Screwtape Letters," we are moving to a "scientific" paganism. C.S. Lewis' name for the "scientific" pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner "beings" was the "Forces."
In "The Screwtape Letters," his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The "Life Force," the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits" – then the end of the war will be in sight.
Some of the largest audiences for this "scientific" paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.
Many Christians are using Jung's active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous "because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner 'beings' accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones."
If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner "beings," uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner "being" is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.
In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner "being" (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.
Jung's autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing 'voices.' In his autobiography he said his home was "... crammed full of spirits ... they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe."
During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, "The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." Keep that word "potential" in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.
Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, "Master morality," which was different from Christian morality – or "slave morality," as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.
In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, "Zarathustra," he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.
After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with "Individual psychology," which maintains that the individual strives for what he called "superiority" but now is called "self-realization" or "self-actualization," and which came from Nietzsche's ideas of striving and self-creation.
The "human potential movement" and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of "potential" teach the superior man.
Edvard Munch said:
Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche's philosophical idea of "will to power" into the psychological concept of self-actualization. Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers's Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. ... Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche's idea of "will to power" and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.
Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of "scientific" psychology. Kearns said:
The methods are based on "the group therapy technique" first developed in America in the 1970's by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group "facilitator". The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator's approach is "value free". There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an "outsider" and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such "judgemental intolerance".

If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in "teaching religious and moral education," then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of "scientific" paganism replacing Christianity.
Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose "approach" was "value free" – that is, there was "no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question."
In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, "THE WEDGE! You can't do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. ... Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group."
Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, "bases his 'Wedge Model' on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble." Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, "Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes."
Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers,
Maslow was always a revolutionary. ... In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, "In Eupsychian Management: A Journal," [Maslow said]: "I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker ... as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch."
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don't believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.
It is understandable that atheists such as Maslow , Adler and Gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since all have the basic assumption is that there is no right or wrong.
But that Christians and priests hold these assumptions is a disgrace. The denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the headlines of the Boston catastrophe and other dioceses

Evaluation of the Charismatic Movement By Father John A. Hardon, S.J.

2009-09-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.unitypublishing.com/Apparitions/HARDONCharismatics.htm

Evaluation of the Charismatic Movement

Pentecostalism; Evaluation a Phenomenon

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J.

Before entering on the formal presentation, I think it will be useful to first clarity some possible sources of misunderstanding. The immediate focus of this study is Pentecostalism.�� It is not directly concerned with the persons who call themselves Pentecostals or, as some prefer, Charismatic.

Moreover, the purpose here is to make an evaluation.� It is not to impart information about Pentecostalism, since such information is fairly presumed, with all the literature by and about the movement and, from many people, either personal experience or direct observation of the movement in action.

Finally, though I seldom do this when speaking, in this case it may be useful to give a run-down of �references� about the speaker�s own qualifications in talking on the subject.

My professional work is teaching Comparative Religion.� A phenomenon like Pentecostalism, I know has for years been one of the characteristic features in other religious cultures, and not only in Protestantism or Roman Catholicism; in fact, not only in Christianity.

Since the first stirring of Pentecostalism in Catholic circles, I have been asked to give some appraisal of it to leaders in the Church who sought counsel on the question, e.g., Bishop Zaleski as chairman of the American Bishops Doctrinal Commission and recently the Jesuit Provincial of the Southern Province, in a three-day private conference in New Orleans.

For several years I have been counselling persons dedicated to Pentecostalism, mainly priests, religious, and seminarians.� And on Palm Sunday of this year I preached at the First Solemn Mass of a priest who is deeply involved in the movement.

My plan for today�s talk is to cover three areas of the subject, at uneven length, namely:

�� 1.� The Historical Background of the Pentecostal Movement, up to the present.

�� 2.� What are the principal elements of Pentecostalism, as viewed by Roman Catholics dedicated to the movement?

�� 3.� An Evaluation in the form of a Critical Analysis of Pentecostalism as a phenomenon which has developed an Ideology.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The essentials of the Pentecostalism we know today began with the Reformation in the sixteenth century as a complement to Biblicism.� The two together have formed an inseparable duality in historic Protestantism.

Where the Bible was canonized in the phrase, Sola Scriptura, as the sole repository of divine revelation; the indwelling Holy Spirit in the heart of every believer was invoked as the only criterion for interpreting the Scriptures or even for recognizing their canonicity.� Thus Sola Scriptura became the basic principle of direction in the life of some Christians, in place of the professedly divine guidance by the Spirit residing in the papacy and the Catholic hierarchy.

Pentecostalism turned sectarian in the nineteenth century whom groups like the Irvingites, Shakers, and Mormons broke away from their parent bodies over what they said was indifference in the established Protestant churches to external manifestations of the presence in converted believers of the Holy Spirit.

What gave these sectarian groups theological rootage was the parallel rise of the Holiness movement among Methodists.� Experience of conversion and an awareness of the Spirit had always been prominent in Wesleyan thought.� With the advent of biblical criticism and the solvent of rationalism, many followers of Wesley fell back almost exclusively on personal experience as a sign of God�s saving presence.

When some of these Holiness groups affiliated with the Irvingiton and their counterparts, modern Pentecostalism was born.

Some would date the beginning with 1900, but more accurately, from 1900 on the Pentecostal movement began its denominational period.� One after another, new congregations were formed or old ones changed to become Pentecostal in principle and policy.� By 1971 some 200 distinct denominations in America qualified as Pentecostals.� While the total is uncertain, ten million in the US is not too high a figure.� Outside North America, the largest contingent is in South America, where Pentecostal missionaries from the States have successfully evangelized in every country below the Rio Grande. Brazil alone has four million, of which 1.8 million are mainly converts who were originally baptized Catholics.

The most recent development in Pentecostalism was the ecumenical collaboration with Catholic groups in the United States, at first cautious, then bolder and now becoming a pattern that give rise to what some call �Catholic Pentecostalism,� but others prefer to say is �The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church.�

�� From this point on, my concern will be uniquely with this latest development, seen through the eyes of its dedicated followers and described by men and women who believe they are, and wish to remain, loyal Catholics but honestly believe that a new dimension should be added to the concept of Catholicism before it was touched by the present outpouring of the Pentecostal grace of the Spirit.

Main Elements of Pentecostalism

Although American Catholic involvement in the Pentecostal movement is hardly five years old (this speech dates back to 1970-1971), a growing body of literature is accumulating.� Most of it is still descriptive or historical, but more than a score of monographs and half a dozen books are frankly theological.� Their authors seriously try to come to grips with what they call the Charismatic Renewal, and their studies are couched in formal, even technical language.

There is no doubt that those who are professed Catholics, and at the same time, committed to Pentecostalism, want to span both shores.� As they view the situation, it should be seen from two perspectives: 1) from the standpoint of Pentecostalism, defining what are its essential features; and 2) from the side of Catholicism, distinguishing what is different about Pentecostalism today, compared with other historical types of the same movement in former times.

Essentials Of Pentecostalism

Writers of a Catholic persuasion isolate certain elements of Pentecostalism and identify them as trans-confessional.� They are simply characteristic of this aspect of Christianity whenever it occurs, whether among Catholics or Protestants or, in fact, whether before the Reformation or since.

1) The primary postulate also gives Pentecostalism its name.� Just as on the first Pentecost in Jerusalem there was an extraordinary decent of the Holy Spirit and a marvellous effusion of spiritual gifts, so at different ages in the Church�s history a similar phenomenon occurs. �

It is generally occasioned by a grave crisis or need in the Church.� God raises certain charismatic persons to visit them with special graces and make them the heralds of His mission to the world.� Such were Benedict and Bruno, Francis and Dominic, Ignatius and Theresa of Avila.

The present age is such a period, certainly of grave crisis in Christianity, during which the Holy �Spirit has decided to enter history in a miraculous way, to raise up once again the leaders of renewal for the Church and, through the Church, for all mankind.

2) No less than on Pentecost Sunday, so now the descent of the Spirit becomes probably� perceptible. This perceptibility shows itself especially in three ways.

�� A) In a personally felt experience of the Spirit�s presence in the one who receives Him.� The qualities of this coming are variously described; they cover one or more of the following internal experiences: deep-felt peace of soul, joyousness of heart, shedding of worry and anxiety, strong conviction of belief, devotion to prayer, tranquillity of emotions, sense of spiritual well being, an ardent piety, and, in general, a feeling of intimacy with the divine which, it is said, had never or only for sporadic moments been experienced before.

�� B) Along with the internal phenomena, which themselves partake of the preternatural, are external manifestations that can be witnessed by others.� Such are speaking in strange tongues, in gift of prophecy, the power of healing, and, it would seem, all the gamut of charismata enumerated in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St. Paul.

�� C) Capping the two sets of phenomena, of internal experience and external manifestation, is the inspiration given by the Spirit to communicate these gifts to others.� Normally a Spirit filled person is the channel of this communication; he becomes a messenger of the Spirit to others and his zeal to act in this missionary role is part of the change that the divine visitation effects in him.

3) The basic condition required to receive the charismatic outpouring is openness of faith.� The only fundamental obstacle is diffidence or distrust of the Spirit to produce today what He had done in ages past.

If the foregoing are typical of Pentecostalism in every critical period of Christianity and the common heritage in Protestant as well as Catholic experience, certain features are typical of Pentecostalism today.

�� 1) Present day Charismatic experience is far wider than ever before.� Where in former days only certain few people received the Pentecostal outpouring, it is now conferred on thousands, and the conferral has only started.� It is nothing less than a deluge of preternatural visitation.

�� 2) Consistent with the large numbers is the fact that Pentecostalism, otherwise than ever before, affects the lettered and unlettered, those obviously pursuing holiness and the most ordinary people.� Indeed, one of the truly remarkable facts in that even quite unholy persons may now suddenly receive the Spirit, provided they open their hearts to Him in docile confidence and faith.

�� 3) Also, unlike in previous times, this is a movement.� It is not just a sporadic experience but a veritable dawn of a new era of the Spirit; such as Christianity had never known in age past.� It is destined, so it seems to sweep whole countries and cultures, and promises to effect changes in co-called institutional Christianity not less dramatic than occurred in Jerusalem when Peter preached his first sermon in response to the coming of the Holy Spirit.

�� 4) As might be expected, the Spirit is now to affect not only individuals or scattered groups here and there.� His charismatic effusion will remake Christian society.� His gifts are to recreate and, where needed, create new communities of believers, bound together by the powerful ties of a common religious experience and sustained by such solidarity as only a mutually shared contact with the divine can produce.

�� 5) While there had been Pentecostal experiences in every stage of Christian history, generally they were characterized by public phenomena or at least their external manifestations were highlighted.� Modern Pentecostalism includes these phenomena, indeed, but, the stress is on the internal gifts received by the people.� Their deep inside conviction of mind and joy of heart are paramount.� These, are, of course, no less phenomenal than the physical gifts of tongues or prophecy or healing of disease.. They, too, partake of the miraculous.� But they are the interior gifts from the Spirit in the spirit, and as such, are the main focus of Pentecostalism in today�s world of doubt and desperation.

Critical Analysis

So far I have given what might be called an overview of Pentecostalism, with emphasis on that form which professed Catholics have not only adopted but which their leaders, priests, religious and the laity, are defining and defending in a spate of books and periodicals.

I have witnessed the phenomena they described, read the literature they have written, spent hours in conference and consultation with those deeply committed to the movement, conferred at length with specialists in the psychological sciences who dealt professionally with �Catholic Pentecostals,� and I have carefully watched the consequences of the movement for several years.� My growing conclusion is that Pentecostalism in the Catholic Church is symptomatic of some grave needs among the faithful that should be met soon and by all effective means at our disposal.� But I also think that Pentecostalism as an ideology is not the answer to these needs.� In fact, it may be a serious obstacle, even a threat, to the authentic renewal in the Spirit inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council.

My reasons for this two fold judgment naturally suggest two sets of appraisal: one for considering Pentecostalism symptomatic and the other for believing it does not meet the felt needs of the Church today.

Pentecostalism As Symptomatic

It is not surprising that a phenomenon like Pentecostalism should have risen to the surface in Catholic circles just at this time.� The Church�s history has seen similar, if less widely publicized, phenomena before.

�� 1) The widespread confusion in theology has simmered down to the faithful and created in the minds of many uncertainty about even such fundamentals as God�s existence, the divinity of Christ, and the Real Presence.

Confusion seeks certitude, and certitude is sough in contact with God.� When this contact is fostered and sustained by group prayers and joint witness to the ancient faith it answers to a deep felt human need.� Pentecostalism in its group prayer situations tries to respond to this often desperate need.

�� 2) Among the critical causes of confusion, the Church�s authority is challenged and in some quarters openly denied.� This creates the corresponding need for some base of religious security which Pentecostalism offers to give in the interior peace born of union with the Spirit.

�� 3) Due to many factors, many not defensible, practices of piety and devotion from regular Novenas, to statutes, rosaries and religious articles have been dropped or phased out of use in the lives of thousands of the faithful.� Pentecostalism serves to fill the devotional vacuum in a way that startles those who have, mistakenly, come to identify Christianity with theological cooperation or the bare minimum of external piety.

�� 4) Ours is in growing measure a prayerless culture.� This has made inroads in Catholicism. It is a commentary on our age that millions have substituted work for prayer; and how the balance needs to be redressed--with Pentecostalism offering one means of restoring the spirit of prayer.

�� 5) In the same way, religion for too many had become listless routine, and prayer a lip service or almost vacuous attendance at the liturgy.� Religion as experience, knowing God and not only about Him; feeling His presence in one�s innermost being--was thought either exotic, or psychotic, or presumptuous.� Pentecostalism promises to give what Christians in our dehumanized Western Society so strongly crave--intimacy with the Divine.

All of this, and more, is part of the background which helps explain why such a movement as the Charismatic came into being.� Its existence is both symptomatic and imperative that something be done--existence is both symptomatic and imperative that something be done--and done well--to satisfy the desire of millions of Christians for peace of mind, security of faith, devotion in prayer, and a felt realization of union with God.

Pentecostalism, as a mistaken Ideology

�� The question that still remains, however, is whether the Pentecostal movement is a valid answer to these recognized needs.� Notice I do not say that individuals who have entered the movement cannot find many of their spiritual needs who have entered the movement cannot find many of their spiritual needs satisfied.� Nor am I saying that group prayer is not helpful for many people; nor, least of all, that the Holy Spirit has been inactive during these trying times to confer precisely an abundance of His sevenfold gifts on those who humbly and in faith invoke His sanctifying name.�

What I must affirm is that Pentecostalism is not a mere movement, it is, as the ending �ism� indicates, an ideology.� And as such it is creating more problems objectively than it solves subjectively.� In other words, even when it gives symptomatic relief to some people, it produces a rash of new, and graver, issues touching on the Catholic faith and its authentic expression by the faithful.

�� 1) The fundamental problem it creates is the absolute conviction of devoted Pentecostals that they have actually received a charismatic visitation of the Holy Spirit.

I am not here referring to such external phenomena as the gift of tongues, but of the deeply inward certitude that a person has been the object of a preternatural infusion, with stress on the infusion of preternatural insights, i.e., in the cognitive order.

This is an astounding assertion, and the only thing un-remarkable about it is that so many Pentecostals are now firmly convinced they have been so enlighten.

Their books and monographs, lectures and testimonials simply assume to be incontestable and beyond refutation that they have been specially illumined by a charism which, they say, is available to others who are equally disposed to receive it.

But repeated affirmation is not enough, and even the strongest subjective conviction is not proof, where a person claims to have been the recipient of such extraordinary gifts; notably of spiritual knowledge as God conferred in apostolic times, or gave to His great mystics in different times.

The dilemma this raises can be easily stated:

Either the Pentecostal experience really confers preternatural insight (at least among its leaders) .� Or, the experience is quite natural, while certainly allowing for the normal operations of divine grace.� Everything which the Pentecostal leadership says suggest that they consider the experience, and I quote their terms; �preternatural, special, mystical, charismatic, extraordinary.�

�� 2.� It is irrelevant to discourse about the charismata in the New Testament, or theologize about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.� No believing Christian denies either the charism or the gifts.� The question at stake is not of faith, about of fact.

Are the so-called charismata truly charismatic?� If they are, then we stand in the presence of a cosmic miracle, more stupendous in proportion--by reason of sheer numbers--than anything the Church has seen, I would say, even in apostolic times.

But if the experiences are not authentically charismatic, then, again, we stand in the presence of a growing multitude of persons who believe themselves charismatically led by the Holy Spirit.� They will make drastic decisions, institute revolutionary changes, or act in a host of other ways--firmly convinced they are responding to a special divine impulse whereas in reality they are acting in response to quite ordinary, and certainly less infallible, motions of the human spirit.

�� 3.� At this point we could begin a completely separate analysis, namely, of the accumulating evidence that the impulses which the Pentecostal leaders consider charismatic are suspiciously very human.� Their humanity, to use a mild word, is becoming increasingly clear from the attitudes being assumed towards established principles and practices in Catholicism.�

Logically, it may be inferred, the Holy Spirit would not contradict Himself.� We expect Him to support what Catholic Christianity believes is the fruit of His abiding presence in the Church of which He is the animating principle of ecclesiastical life.

What do we find?� In the published statements, and therefore not the casual remarks of those who are guiding the destiny of the Pentecostal movement among Catholics, are too many disconcerting positions to be lightly dismissed by anyone who wants to make an objective appraisal of what is happening.

I limit myself to only a few crucial issues, each of which I am sure, will soon have a cluster of consequences in the practical order:

�� a) The Papacy.� If there is one doctrine of Catholic Christianity that is challenged today it is the Roman Primacy.� Yet in hundreds of pages of professional writing about the charismatic gifts, we find a studied silence--no doubt to avoid offense to other Pentecostals--about the papacy; and a corresponding silence about a more loyal attachment to the Holy See.� It is painful to record but should be said that the pioneer of American Pentecostalism among Catholics and its publicly take issue with Pope Paul V1 On Humane Vitae

�� b) The Priesthood and Episcopate.� Running as a thread through apologists for Catholic Pentecostalism is an almost instinctive contraposition of, and I quote, �charismatic� and �hierarchical, � or �spiritual� and �institutional�.� While some commentators state the dual aspects in the Church and even stress the importance of harmony between the two, others have begun to opt for a theological position quite at variance with historic Catholicism.� They suggest that in the New Testament there was essentially only one sacrament for conferring the gifts of the Spirit.� Baptism gave a Christian all the essentials of what later on the �institutional church� developed into separate functions, namely the diaconate, priesthood and episcopate.

�� c) Catholic Apostolate.� The heaviest artillery of Pentecostals in the Catholic camp is levelled at the �ineffectual, irrelevant and dispirited� form of Christianity prevalent in the Church.� Accordingly, under the impulse of the Spirit, radical changes are demanded in the Church�s apostolate.� Old forms of trying to reach the people, especially the young, should be abandoned.� This applies particularly to Catholic education.� �In spite of the immense expenditure of money and human effort being put into parochial schools, �Pentecostals are saying, �how often do we not hear complaint that a pitifully small proportion of the students emerge as deeply convinced and committed Christians?� We can therefore well use some new life in the Church.� �Concretely this means to enter other kinds of work for the faithful, and not retain Catholic parochial schools--as more than one teaching order, influenced by Pentecostalism, has already decided to carry into effect.�

�� d) The New Spirituality.� Given the posture of Pentecostalism as a phenomenal downpour of charismatic grace, it is only natural that the human contribution to the divine effusion is minimized.� Actually defendants of the movement are careful to explain that a new kind of spirituality was born with Pentecostalism.

As heretofore taught, persons aspiring to sanctity were told that recollection had to be worked at and cultivated.� It meant painstaking effort to keep oneself in the presence of God and consciously fostering, perhaps through years of practice, prayerful awareness of God.� The charismatic movement is actually a discovery that all of this propaedeutics is unnecessary. In view of its importance, it is worth quoting the new spiritual doctrine in full:

There is a subtle but very significant difference between what the presence of God means in the spiritual doctrine that has long been usual in novitiates, seminaries, and the like, and what it means for those who have shared the Pentecostal experience.

The difference can be put bluntly in the following terms: The former put the accent on the practice, whereas the latter put it on the presence.� That is to say, the former regard the constant awareness of God�s presence as a goal to be striven for, but difficult to attain; hence they exert themselves in recalling over and over that God is here, and in frequently renewing their intention to turn their thoughts to Him.�

The latter, on the contrary, seem to start with the experiential awareness of God�s presence as the root which enlivens and gives its characteristic notes to all their prayer, love and spirituality.

It is not too much to call this �instant mysticism�.� And if some charismatic do not succeed as well (or as soon) as others in this sudden experience of God which dispenses with the labourious process of cultivating recollection, it must be put down to a lack of sufficient docility to the Spirit or, more simply, to the fact that the Holy Spirit remains master of His gifts and breathes when (and where He wills).

But the essential dictum stands: those who charismatically experience God, and they are now numbered in thousands, came by the phenomenon without having to go through the hard school of mental and ascetical discipline still taught by an outmoded spirituality.

�� e) Aggressive Defensiveness.� Having postulated what they call the �Pentecostal Spirituality,� its proponents defend it not only against present-day critics of such �cheap grace,� but they anticipate unspoken objections from the masters of mystical theology.� Among their silent critics, whom they criticize, is St. John of the Cross.

As elsewhere, so here is offered a contraposition, the classical doctrine on the charism (or extraordinary gifts of the Spirit) and the new doctrine of Pentecostalism.� Again direct quotation will bring out the full confrontation:

On the practical level, the classical doctrine on the charism has been formed chiefly by St. John of the Cross.

The stand that he takes is predominantly negative: i.e., a warning against the harm that comes from rejoicing excessively in the possession of such gifts.� The one who does so, he says, leaves himself open to deception, either by the devil or by his own imagination: in relying on these charism, he� loses some of the merit of faith; and finally, he is tempted to vainglory.

Similarly when St. John discusses supernatural communications that come by way of visions or words, particularly those that are perceived by the imagination or the bodily senses, he is mainly concerned to warn against the dangers of deception and excessive attachment.� He condemns the practice of seeking to obtain information from God through persons favoured with such communications. Even when God answers the queries that are thus addressed to Him, He does so out of condescension for our weakness, and not because he is pleased to be thus questioned.

If there is anywhere that Pentecostal spirituality seem to conflict with the classical it is here. Then follow pages of a strong defence of the new positive approach to charismatic experience, admitting that where conflict exists between this and the teaching of such mystics as John of the Cross, the main reason is obvious.� Men like John and women like Theresa of Avila lived in a former age, when charism were rare and then given only to individuals.� In our age they are literally an inundation and their recipients are countless multitudes.

�� f) Religious Communities.� Not surprisingly, the Pentecostal movement has made some of its deepest effects of religious communities, of men, but especially of women.

All problems facing the Church at large affected the lives of those who, by prior commitment, dedicated themselves to the pursuit of holiness.

When the charismatic experience offered them release from anxiety and the hope of a strong sense of God�s presence----in spite of the turmoil all around----religious took to the movement on a scale that no one actually knows.� But all estimates indicated that the number is large.

We are still on our final analysis and our approach has been to point up the ideology of Pentecostal leadership, to see whether (and if) it is at variance with historic Catholicism.

A recently, privately-bound study of a religious who took to Pentecostalism reveals many things about convents and cloisters that is common knowledge among the initiated but still unknown among the faithful at large.

Thematic to this study is the firm belief that the betenoire of religious life is structure and institutionalism; that openness to the Spirit along Pentecostal lines gives best promise for religious in the future.� A few sample statements indicated the general tenor:

�� We must remember that in order to choose religious life, you must be a misfit.

�� The danger is that a sacred institution tends to isolate man so he can stand back and deal with God.� The institution tends to come between man and God.

�� Religious life is a human institution which God merely tolerates.� God�s pleasure is the one thing necessary, and God�s good pleasure is man�s total openness.� It is in this openness that we find our true identity, but this takes courage.

�� Total openness takes faith.� Awareness of our true identity implies a life of faith.� But faith implies doubt.� You can�t have faith without doubt.� Doubt and faith are two sides of the same thing.� We don�t pray right because we evade doubt.� And we evade it by regularity and by activism.� It is in these two ways...by which we justify the self-perpetuation of our institutions.

While other factors have also been operative, it was sentiments like these that contributed to the growing tide in some communities with impatience at the slowness of the institutional Church to up-date religious life, make it truly open to the Spirit, and experience the rich depth of internal peace and joy that seemed to be lacking in �structured community routine.�

It is not a coincidence that some spokesmen for the charismatic approach to a life of the evangelical counsels have been most critical of such symbols of institutionalism as the Sacred Congregation for Religious.� It is not surprising that some who feel that Rome is archaic or out of touch with the times should also be most enthusiastic about Pentecostalism.�

Epilogue:

There are those who say we should just allow the Pentecostal movement to go and then see what happens.� But that is not in the best tradition of Christian prudence.� If, as I personally believe, latter-day Pentecostalism is in the same essential stream with Gnosticism, Montanism, and Illuminism, we do not pass moral judgment on people but prudential judgment on an ideology if we say all that I have said in this lecture.

There are gave needs in the Church today--of which the gravest is the urgent recovery of prayer across the spectrum of Catholic living--among bishops, priests, religious and the laity.� But if prayer and the experience of God�s presence are so ungently needed, we must use the means that centuries of Christian wisdom have shown are securely effective to satisfy this need. Pentecostalism is not one of these means.

Embrace Purity- Save the World

2009-08-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.unitypublishing.com/Moral/PurityNow.htm

Richard Salbato 6-29-2009

I have always been so impressed by the rapid expansion of the early Church and the methods of that expansion. Of course, the very early Church was backed up by many miracles to prove the truth they were saying. There were many reasons these miracles were needed at that time, but the biggest is the fact that these teaching were radically different and required a radical change in life without compromise.

In just a few years the Church spread throughout the Middle East, India and China. Rome and Europe took longer because of the strong resistance of the Emperors. A thousand years later, as the leaders of the Church compromised on basic truths, the Church was mostly pushed out of India, China and the Middle East becoming a small minority, as it is today.

Putting aside the miracles of the early Church, what really converted so many people so fast, was the radical sharp contrast in life styles.

Let’s use Africa as an example of what I mean. The missionaries went into Africa to convert the natives, but found the Witch Doctors had total control of the people. These Witch Doctors were another example of the times where children were sacrificed just like in South America. When a child was born, the Witch Doctors would examine the child, and if there was any defect at all (a twisted hand or food, a mark of any kind), the Doctor would have it killed, less it contaminated the tribe.

Unable to make inroads into the tribes because of their fear of the Witch Doctors, the missionaries asked the Witch Doctors if (instead of killing these babies) these missionaries could take the new-born children away from the village to their monasteries.

The missionaries did not try to convert the tribes, they just raised the children. They baptized them, taught them to read and write. They taught them to talk and act like ladies and gentlemen, to bathe and fix their hair. They showed them how to make clothes, to plant food, to raise livestock. When older than taught them the values of purity of body and mind and the way to treat others with love and respect. They showed them why it was wrong to pierce their noses and ears or paint their faces. They taught the equality of men and women, and something very new to Africa, Marriage between one man and one woman.

When these young men and woman reached the age of adulthood, the young tribe people noticed how beautiful and different they were. So attracted were they to them that they came to find out the secret to their, what shall we call it, radical difference. It was this radical contrast in life styles that converted a great part of Africa, until Christianity became the predominate religion, and Witch Craft was almost wiped out.

No one loved the Witch Doctors, they only feared them. They forced young women to live with whomsoever they wanted them to and as many woman as they wanted. By this method, they gained the support of the men, but not the women. In fact, the women were slaves to the men. But the missionaries and their converts were not afraid of these phony Witch Doctors.

The same radical sharp contrast in life styles was used with the North and South American Indians, and today you can see the thousands of Churches and Monasteries build hundreds of years ago, when their existed mostly native Americans.

When you read the history of the Jews before Christ, you see over and over how God punished them for compromising with the society around them, instead of holding tight to their uncompromising way of life.

Like a well trained army marching towards Heaven, you could always tell a Catholic anywhere in the world by the way they dressed, and conducted themselves. Even in their worship, except for language, you could find little differences between Italy, Spain, America or Mexico.

Now, tell me or yourself, can you see today a radical sharp contrast in life styles between Catholics and non-Catholics in America or Europe? Is their a contrast between the way they dress, act, talk, eat, pray, vote, etc.? Why not? Why are we not converting anyone today? In fact, the conversions we do have are people who have studied on their own, and converted themselves.

What happened? Prior to World War II, things were very different than today. I don’t remember the war because I was too young, but I do remember the end of the war. There were problems and some changes caused by the war – women living away from their parents before marriage for the first time, the beginning of dating, the start of woman drinking, a slight change in clothes styles. Nevertheless, in the 50s morals and restrained behavior were the norm and not the exception.

Then little by little there was the never ending but very slight changes in talk, actions, dress, and more important, the attitude against good people. These changes started slowly at first, maybe a new but not moral word making its way around the youth like a virus. Almost unnoticed changes in the way people dress. Slightly more aggressive women became acceptable and even admired.

The Church teaches that even the most innocent venial sins corrupt the mind and little by little lead to moral sins and deadly habitual thinking. The same is true of giving in to the social pressure of going along with gradual changes.

Parents started having pressure from their children, “Everyone is doing it. I will be out of place and everyone will laugh at me. No one brings their parents along, people will laugh at me. That is out of style.” The start of the so-called age gap came because the movement of glorifying badness started with the young.

Parents started compromising for peace in the family, and then they found themselves compromising more and more until there was no moral control at all. Sadly, these children of the sixties and seventies have become parents, themselves. Worse than that, the children of the 60s and 70s have become the school teachers.

Just blending in or going along with the style of the time is not the real truth. When a young man gets a tattoo, he wants to say to everyone around him: “I am bad.” I young girl who shows of her body in an immoral way, or pierces her nose, like the Africans, is wanted everyone around her to know: “I am bad.” We need a sharp contrast to this so they will see that “I am bad” is not a good thing.

Proud of Purity

Now, let us look back to the early Church. Just as the missionaries proudly exhibited the purity of the children they raised without compromise, we need to start all over with the young – young who understand the value and happiness of purity of mind and body – young who are not afraid to share their commitment to purity – young who want to evangelize by example the sharp contrast in life styles. We need young men, who are not ashamed to be virgins – strong, brave, masculine men, who do not compromise for acceptance – leaders and not followers.

Let us train the young to love to be different in an immoral world, and even let them teach their parents the happiness they have in being leaders in a secular, immoral world. The older mid-aged might be too set in their ways by habitual small sins and compromises to ever change, but the young are not so far gone as to be molded. Like the children of early Africa, we want children who parade their purity like a torch to the rest of society.

We need children who will show a sharp contrast that will make the secular world really see how immoral they are. Contrast a real slut with a girl who has only had a little sex, and you might say the second was moral, but this is not true. Show a picture of a Playboy bunny against a Hustler girl and you might say the Playboy is moral. We need sharp contrasts, like Mother Therese of Calcutta against a modernist nun.

How do we start?

Years ago, a friend of mine and I had the idea of retreats or clinics to teach young people values and principles of purity and happiness. I wrote then, what I think is still a good outline plan for this movement. What The World Needs Now

To get this movement going, we need a structured organization that can recruit teachers and attract the young. What The World Needs Now is a good outline of how to do this.

The best place to start is the many Home Schooling groups because these parents and children have at least the desire to stand out in contrast to a secular – immoral world.

These retreats or clinics need to be in every city in America, and later the world, but to do this we need teaches. We can find enough Churches to hold these clinics, but organizing and promoting this needs leaders and these leaders can find the teachers.

Now, I am too old to lead this movement, so I am appealing to the already well organized Home Schoolers to come forth and over this leadership.

Let us create an army of young people who will hold up a torch of purity as a sharp contrast the rest of the world. This will attract followers, instead of caving in to the never ending changes in life styles of the immoral times.

Richard Salbato

Other articles I have written on this subject.

Right Thinking Develops Right Conscience

Satan says: "Never Judge!"

How To Teach Purity

Sins Against Purity Cause Wars

The Art of Being Father or Mother

Dignity & St. Joseph, the Worker

Unforeseen Consequences

Woman, God's Last Creation

The Virtue of Intolerance

Core Values and Principles

Justice is Love

Abortion is not the Problem

Etiquette - The Art of Love

Lord, I Did It My Way

Are You Catholic? Are You Sure?

Of Shepherds and Kings

Greatest Direction For Our Times (Near Death Experience&Justification of Sin - Gates of Hell)

False Virtue

Right Thinking Develops Right Conscience

Satan says: "Never Judge!"

How To Teach Purity

Sins Against Purity Cause Wars

The Art of Being Father or Mother

Dignity & St. Joseph, the Worker

Unforeseen Consequences

Woman, God's Last Creation

The Virtue of Intolerance

Core Values and Principles

God's War with Sodomites

Justice is Love

Abortion is not the Problem

Etiquette - The Art of Love

The Few Number Who Are Saved

Lord, I Did It My Way

Are You Catholic? Are You Sure?

Of Shepherds and Kings

Greatest Direction For Our Times (Near Death Experience&Justification of Sin - Gates of Hell)

False Virtue

What The World Needs Now

The Art Of Being Enchanting With Words

Are You Who You Want To Be?

Narcissists Do Not Love Themselves

How Was Killing Sold To American With Deliberate Lies

Abortion, Fast Cash Money and No Taxes

Stopping Abortions Worldwide and How

Condoning Sin by Your Vote

Do Not Treat Sex Commonly

How Many Catholics Are Saved?

Why Do So Many Catholics Go To Hell?

Homosexuals and Hope

Dating and Things - Dialogue of the Old and the Young

Marriage and Divorce - Dialogue of the Old and the Young

Earthly Friends - Possible? - Dialogue of the Old and the Young

Wealth and Possessions - Dialogue of the Old and the Young

Joy of the Holy Spirit - Dialogue of the Old and the Young

Limbo

Where the Holy Spirit is - There is the Catholic Church

Raising Children in the Modern World

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