Quite a while ago now I posted an entry entitled Group funded by George Soros poised to attack US Bishops for the “Fortnight for Freedom”.
It seems that Soros was also involved with the Nuns On The Bus. They were able to go ’round and ’round in their polluting bus because one of Soros’s tentacles backed them.
The Nuns On The Bus (NOTB) went ’round and ’round with a political agenda – attacking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) under the usual left-winger mask of concern for the poor.
The best source for this is the blog Laetificat, which was an early and thorough reporter on the Nuns On The Bus.
There are various pieces to this. Look to Laetificat for more.
Here is something interesting. Embedded with the NOTB was one Casey Schoeneberger who did their media relations. She works for the lobby Faith In Public Life and before that with NETWORK. As Laetificat points out:
As Sr Mary Ann Walsh of the USCCB quoted from this page that has all the details, they are “a group founded with help from a pro-abortion group long directed by John Podesta called the Center for American Progress. . . (CAP); like the CAP it has received funding . . . from billionaire atheist George Soros. . . . ”
And you will remember the concerns of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR – a subsidiary of the Magisterium of Nuns) not be involved with NETWORK Lobby.
Laetificat also goes into the tall brush looking for FIPL’s connections. Among them are ACORN and the Industrial Areas Foundation (i.e., Saul Alinksy).
On a different theme but still related to the NOTB, Laetificat also posted this:
On June 27th, Sr Simone [Campbell of NOTB and director of NETWORK] was interviewed by a reporter for Bill Moyers’ PBS show. Her reponse to “Tell us about your own personal journey. Who are your greatest influences?” does not mention Jesus, or any Catholic leader. Her response to “What does being Catholic mean to you?” has only vaguely to do with Catholicism, but entails a rejection of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, in favor of a materialist interpretation of the story that George Soros would find entirely satisfying.
Fredericks: What does being Catholic mean to you?
Sister Simone: To me it’s that amazing history of spiritual practice, social engagement, witnessing to the fact that Jesus lives in our world now and says that there is enough if we share. The miracle of the loaves and fishes — one of the accounts says 5,000 men ate. Well, the reason they only counted the men was the women and children knew it was the women who had brought all the food! Only the guys thought it was a miracle, the women knew it was about breaking bread and sharing it. This isn’t biblical — this is just my interpretation of it, but to me the miracle was sharing.
Yikes. She’s right that isn’t Biblical. Neither is it Catholic.
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This isn’t biblical — this is just my interpretation of it,
Wow…just wow…
How can someone just denounce one Jesus’ miracles like that? I can only wonder what she has to say about the Wedding in Cana.
Yeah, every night when I put dinner on the table, my husband and children think it’s a miracle because they didn’t cook the food. That’s why they all bow their heads and say “Bless us, O Lord, in these Thy gifts…” because they have no idea I’m the one who made it and put it on the table.
She doesn’t want to believe Jesus is God, because then He might have some claim on her. It’s so much easier to make up rationalizations that justify not believing all those “stories”.
“He was just a good man! A great moral teacher! Great moral teachers can’t effect miracles, can they? And if he’s just a man, my opinion is just as important (or more so!) than his” the thinking goes.
Incidentally, her interpretation of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes reminded me of my RCIA director’s explanation of transubstantiation. She said that the wheat for the Host grows because God makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall, and the water comes from similar natural causes, and the human makes it and bakes it prayerfully, and therefore, it contains something of God in it. My RCIA director is a BIG fan of the Magisterium of Nuns. Can you tell?
Denial of the Incarnation, or hatred of it is a sign of “I shall not serve” and we know who said that, at least in action, if not the words of Milton.
Sigh, I could think of many people Soros could be helping right now: Michael Voris, the Ordinariate priest’s families, the Vatican which is in the red. This list is long..
Those are nuns? Huh. I thought they were real estate agents.
Wait…so her own baseless rewriting of a Bible story is what Catholicism means to her? Actually…yeah, that fits.
The reason the Gospels (the feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle in all four) mention men is that the evangelists wish to suggest that what we have here is the making of a rebel legion — 5000 men ready to take up arms in light of Jesus’ messiahship, which the feeding has just proved. John’s Gospel makes it more explicit: “…they intended to come and make him a king by force” (Jn 6:15). When it comes to Sr. Simone, I guess all one can do is say, Mit Dummheit kämpfen selbst Götter vergebens.
I wish I had a buck for every time I’ve heard that “miracle of sharing” chestnut from the pulpit.
“Well, the reason they only counted the men was the women and children knew it was the women who had brought all the food! Only the guys thought it was a miracle, the women knew it was about breaking bread and sharing it.”
Sounds like a good joke if she wasn’t serious. Instead it sounds sexist.
So the whole miracle was a fraud perpetrated by… the women!
I’m beginning to think George Soros must be the Antichrist – every bad thing going on in this country seems to be funded by him – Obama, the TV networks (other than Fox), and now the LCWR. The list goes on …
At a first communion of a cousin’s son the priest likened the Eucharist to “sharing your
hamburger at McDonalds with your friends”.
Well, two years later at her daughter’s first
communion the children got the truth & no
balloon fest either. It’s pitiful when the laity
have to “police” some priests & religious.
I called it! I said, some how, some way, I bet we’d find George Soros behind this, and voila!
I think it’d be amusing to make a book out of all this here sister’s personal interpretations of all miracles:
– Creation in Genesis: Mother Earth and Gaia harbored and brought forth life through evolution.
– Parting of the Red Sea: The women built boats, and fought the Egyptians with swords… swords made out of courage, touching words and love!!! The men just had fun on the beach playing volleyball.
– Elijah calling down fire from heaven to defeat the prophets of Baal: Elijah was a great orator, he was actually calling forth the first ecumenistic gathering where both sides, he and the priests of Baal reached an understanding whereupon they respect each others religions and people would be free to choose whether or not they wanted children or to share them with Baal because they were too poor of course… such that Baal could bless them with abundance. The ‘fire’ from heaven was Elijah calling upon the ‘spirit’ who would move over them as a warm cloud of gentleness and caring. This is the same spirit of Vatican II, so one could say Vatican II preceded all Church councils!
– Jesus healing the sick: Israel needed great health care reform and so the bible shows that there were so many without it and that the government wasn’t taking adequate measures to help them and the poor. (Speaking or referencing the name ‘Jesus’ will be avoided).
Quite frankly, I have a feeling that if the Word of God was incarnated as a woman, she’d have literally no trouble believing in miracles.
Why do people of this mindset remain or call themselves Catholics? Frankly i doubt that they are even Christians but rather Secular Humanists. The hypocrisy of it all.
Here is a piece I wrote on the Nuns on teh Bus for Catholic Exchange earlier this week. I am not at all surprised at the funding.
http://catholicexchange.com/nuns-on-the-bus/
Check out Creative Minority Report today for a video of 75 Congressional Democrats saying thank you to the Nuns on the Bus. Some of them are just actually saying “thank you” or “thanks for all you do to help the poor,” etc. — probably just commandeered by NETWORK at what is obviously an event of some kind. But some actually say the Nuns are the “conscience of the Church” and things like that.
Seriously?? Oi Vey!!!!
If I had the money of George Soros…. I could sure think of better uses for it! Why does it seem like all these rich people donate to these “great causes” instead of helping real people? When I donate my little pittance (in comparison) it goes to help victims of disasters or to help the local St. Vincent de Paul Center, shelter or food pantry, or other deserving local charities. My time is the same, though of necessity, more local.
@Sissy – that explanation of Transubstantiation just floors me… I’m sorry you are/were being exposed to that nonsense! I hate to think of what other errors are being taught in that RCIA class! Prayers for you and your RCIA director.
Laura98: thanks for the prayers; RCIA was pretty bad. I pray for her all the time, because she is very confused and misinformed. My mouth fell open at that description, too, but I was glad she aired her views. It gave the rest of the class a chance to share the truth with her! It just goes to show what kind of damage these LWCR leaders do on the local level. My RCIA director is a big fan of the writings of some of these “sisters”.
Laura98 and everyone-
George Soros intends to destroy the Catholic Church, get rid of at least half of the world’s population, and to destroy the concept of individual countries so as to bring about a super One World Government, One World Currency, and One World Religion whereby all men will be united and controlled for the ‘greater good.’ He knows well what he’s doing and who he’s funding and it’s all to achieve these goals. We have been greatly underestimating our enemies and how evil mankind can be. Youtube interviews of him and see him state all this for himself openly on camera.
–Well, the reason they only counted the men was the women and children knew it was the women who had brought all the food! Only the guys thought it was a miracle, the women knew it was about breaking bread and sharing it. This isn’t biblical — this is just my interpretation of it, but to me the miracle was sharing.–
Let me get this straight. She really thinks that the women brought the food, because of course the women always could have been depended upon to have brought enough food, no matter how impoverished their family or how long the outing, but the guys just assumed that this time the women hadn’t done so, and so it was a miracle because everyone “somehow” got fed. She thinks 5,000 men were there, and none of them caught on that Jesus hadn’t supplied anything and that the mothers and grandmothers were giving food away to complete strangers. The kids even got it, the women just bit their tongues, smirked, but everyone let the men think that? Of course, she omits the fact that of course the children would have been adults as this story went around in the decades afterward, but they all kept this secret for some reason? More to the point, she thinks Jesus went along with this charade, and bit his tongue while everyone gave him credit for what someone else did? I’d be really interested to hear what she thought happened with the physical cures attributed to Our Lord. Maybe herbal cures from women who were afraid to be branded witches, perhaps? He’s the male cover that makes the unseen and unappreciated altruisms of women free to operate without molestation?
This says volumes about the dim view she has of men, not to mention the self-satisfied view she has of women. I also find it telling that she gives no credit to Providence. God does nothing, Our Lord himself did nothing, men not only do nothing but are oblivious to what’s going on around them–not just individually here and there, but en masse!–we women do everything, and that, in a nutshell, is what “Jesus lives in the world now” means to her. That is where “miracles” actually come from. Worse yet, she says this to Bill Moyers with a straight face. I suppose they both believe he, too, would have been one of those oblivious men, if not for the enlightening grace of NPR?
Mark Shea’s humorous and insightful take: The True Meaning of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.
Funny how the feminists’ convoluted explanations for the loaves and fishes never seem to mention the inconvenient fact of the twelve baskets of leftovers afterwards. Just how did those clever women manage that, I wonder?
And another, slightly related thought. I have always wondered how Jesus managed to be heard by 5,000 people without the aid of microphones and large speakers.
Tradster: they put them in tupperware containers and stored them in the freezer for future pot-luck casseroles, of course!!!
Tradster — There was an interesting article at Language Log this month about how far an orator can project his voice, given a quiet audience. It’s called “Hearing Lincoln.”
Most people these days never learn to project their voices properly, or only know this talent from the example of drill instructors or well-trained actors. But before the microphone, all public speakers learned to project.
Sissy – Of course! Being one of those clueless males I overlooked the obvious. Lol!
Suburbanbanshee – Thank you for that article; it was both interesting and informative. Not that any such crowd could be silent enough nowadays with all the cell phones being used.
It’s not just the “nuns” – check out the dissenting priest on the tour too…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETMofu1gQvI&feature=endscreen&NR=1
This “miracle of sharing” interpretation of the feeding of the 5000 is not limited to the “Nuns on the Bus”. I have heard it from the pulpit (and therefore from ordained clergy) numerous times in different parishes. Naturally enough, after hearing that I have a hard time trusting any scriptural interpretation from that clergyman if he can not see the obvious error in this and the complete disagreement with early church fathers.
The shocker to me was hearing it spoken by the voice of Archbishop Niederauer (of San Francisco) himself, on Immaculate Heart Radio – and I am not kidding!! He qualified it at the end, saying “others may prefer more traditional interpretations.” Yeah, right. This was last year, in the fall of 2011.
Where did this come from? I have heard it so often it seems like it must be getting taught by some heretics in the seminaries. Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t this a Modernist heresy?
This “miracle of the sharing” also took place in a time before bread-making was standardized, so every woman, every family, every district was making bread in slightly different ways. But the “miracle of the sharing” presupposes that the men were also dim enough not to know the difference between their own wives’ bread that they consumed every day versus someone else’s bread.
If every woman brought bread for her own family’s picnic, why did they need to share??
ArtND76 –
In my Catholic high school religion class, we were taught that the Israelites exaggerated tons of details in the Old Testament. We we encouraged to look for more natural explanations of phenomena such as the Nile turning into blood being the result of residue from red hued rocks, along with the other plagues, the Red Sea Crossing being an exaggeration, etc. etc. It’s like the Old Testament was treated as some grand fairy tale where stories were passed down orally but distorted like a game of Chinese Whispers. Oh, but the New Testament, oh that’s all true for no distinguishing reason why… So I’m not surprised that inevitably, people are already reinterpreting the New Testament too! It doesn’t fit in with our age of atheistic scientism brainwashing. Everything must be reduced. It’s no wonder many in the Church don’t believe in miracles or that God can miraculously save us anymore. It’s like he’s just someone vaguely out there who is restricted to using secondary natural causes to get things done. Not that He doesn’t, but if only we asked Him in faith, He could do a lot more! The most recent example being the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima.
Johnno –
Yes, what you were taught concerning Old Testament “exaggerations” is exactly what I heard concerning all of scripture during my first 3 years of university life several decades ago at an illustrious “catholic” university. It nearly made an atheist out of me. While it is not spiritually healthy to obsess looking for miracles, it is also not spiritually healthy to not believe that they ever have, do or will occur. “But look at how wonderful Christian social teaching is, and how wonderful the world would be if it was followed” I was told. “That should be enough to convince you” I was told. Sorry, I said, but if there never were any miracles (especially the bodily resurrection of Jesus the Christ), then how should I believe in any meaningful afterlife? And why should I believe scriptural accounts of miracles if the promised signs given at the end of Mark’s Gospel (for instance) are no longer operative today? If the Gospels are merely exaggerated, stylistic stories then why should their teachings hold any more weight than those of any other religion?
I have read in some of Pope Benedict’s writing that he considers this type of denial of the “historicity” of the scriptures to be an erroneous way of interpreting them. If Jesus Christ is who the Gospels portray Him to be and truly said what the Gospels say He did, then I should always be able to trust the Pope’s interpretation of scripture, or the gates of hell will truly have prevailed.
I think there is a LOT of anti-Catholic intent behind the support for the bus sisters. It’s “soft” anti-Catholicism, but in a sense it’s a different mode of the same sentiment behind the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “quit the church” campaign.
http://billmoyers.com/2012/06/27/sister-simone-campbell-on-what-drives-nuns-on-the-bus/
I recommend clicking the link and reading the interview with Sr Simone yourself, there is more, for instance she says the reason for the bus trip was to capitalize on public sympathy for dissident sisters in light of the CDF doctrinal assessment, which to her “seemed like a great convergence to have this notoriety used for the sake of our mission.”
She is also asked about whether there is room for differences of opinion on how to apply Catholic social teaching. Etc.